Reflections from the sick house.

Sickness has taken hold of our household (I mean mine, not the nation's -- we already knew that). and no one has been left unscathed, although our son seems to have escaped with nothing more than a hoarse voice. We've been to the doctors, we've been to the pharmacies. No good drugs came of any of it, but our daughter got some eye drops and I have some chloraseptic.

That being said, my wife has received the worst of it, being confined to the house for the past day and a half. So this evening to give her some peace and to get our son's energy level down, I gathered up the two kids and headed to Kalorama Park. As parents may know, that park is a nightmare in broad daylight because the play areas have absolutely no shelter from the sun. However, in the evening, it's a different story.

Tonight the dog owners who ignore the district's leash law were leaving as we arrived, which was nice. The sun was fading behind the townhouses down the hill from the park -- that's a beautiful sight, to see the bright sky across the western edges of the city while the streets nearby are already giving themselves over to darkness. A bit of Magritte, though less extreme.

Professionally dressed types walked by with their dry cleaning over their backs, young couples held hands close on the street, the muffled sounds of basketball came from the court on the lower edge of the park, and of course always the parents with their strollers drifting through the park. People were coming home from work or going out to eat; they were walking their dogs or running in ipod-ed seclusion; some were going to work. I listened to the kids playing all around me and the traffic going by on the street, stared at the large apartment buildings across Columbia Road, and was strangely at peace with the progress of my life.