Chicken soup season of life

About as long as I can remember, the fall, winter and spring seasons have been punctuated by fairly predictable bouts of bronchitis/sinus infections, usually at least two doozies a year. This week, like clockwork, a sinus infection ambushed me, and even the twice-a-day doses of unpleasant antibiotics didn't work much magic on the misery.

When my kids were little and I was sick, I would run from activity to activity with them, only slowing down if I was running a fever - or, in one memorable health crisis, ending up in the hospital with pneumonia. That one slowed me down for weeks, but I bounced back to my regularly-scheduled program.

But my last couple of go-rounds with respiratory infections have shown me that I'm somewhere new in my life. I'm not bouncing back like I did at 30. It's more like I'm rolling back.

Uphill.

Some call this mid-life. I'm not sure it's mid-point for me (both of my parents died in their sixties, I turned fifty last summer), but it's definitely a new season.

One that definitely requires a bit more patience, and someone, somewhere to bring me some homemade chicken soup the next time I get ambushed by a case of upper respiratory creeping crud.