Pizza Toast of Hope

I spent a week feeling miserable in both body and mind after catching the trendy Mycoplasma pneumonia my eldest son brought home, which ended up becoming quite severe.

The cough settled down to a level that didn't interfere with daily life pretty quickly, so that was fine. The problem was my mouth. The desertification of my mouth was serious.

Because I carelessly neglected to hydrate, dehydration progressed without me realizing it, and before I knew it, all moisture had vanished from my mouth. It had completely disappeared without even leaving a note saying it was running away from home.
Oh, mouth, I haven't exactly pampered you, but I don't remember raising you to be such a 'wretched thing'.

What happens when your mouth dries up?
First, your sense of taste starts reacting only to the unpleasantness of food.

From perfectly cooked rice, you only taste the powdery traces of its dried-food days.
From green peppers, you only taste the nasty bitterness after all the deliciousness has been erased.
From delicious autumn fruits, you only taste the cloying, persistent sweetness.

In short, you can pinpoint and smell only the bad parts of every single ingredient.

And then, you become completely unable to eat. This was a miscalculation and, above all, it was tough.

The thought 'Huh? This doesn't taste good... it's kind of hard to keep eating' turned into 'I can't eat' within a few hours, and before I knew it, I was in a state where 'I feel hungry, but there is absolutely nothing I can eat'.

The usual go-to foods for when you're feeling unwell all staged a rebellion. The soup was Judas, the fruit was Brutus, and the jelly drink was Akechi Mitsuhide.

Anyway, everything was a no-go. Even though the fridge was overflowing with food, there wasn't a single thing that could comfort me. To think I would experience the loneliness of my morning sickness days all over again now...

I wanted to feel better with an IV drip, but sadly, the world was in the middle of a three-day weekend. Even when I tried to reach out to holiday clinics, I was turned away with 'We don't have a specialist (internist) available,' and after being asked, 'You're able to drink water, right?', I was just treated as someone who was very hungry, given a little encouragement, and then the call was ended.

That's why, for several days, I've been living as just a very hungry person. I sleep, wake up, leave all the housework and childcare to my husband, stay hungry, and then sleep again.

In the midst of all that, there's breakfast.
Even if I'm hungry and can't eat, I have to manage the children's meals somehow. My husband did his best at night, but I felt bad asking him to handle breakfast too, since he's not a morning person.

Looking around the kitchen, there's a bag of six-slice Cho-juku bread. Opening the fridge, there's a half-used green pepper. A few sausages my husband bought. In the freezer, there's melting cheese and sweet corn.

The menu is decided in a second. This morning, it's pizza toast. Definitely pizza toast. That's all there is. That's all I can manage.

Since my 'unpleasantness sensor' reacts even to the smell of ingredients, the truth is I wanted to be freed from making breakfast too. Looking around, my eldest son, who was a 'Mycoplasma buddy' until last week, is lounging on the sofa.

'...Hey, could you make some pizza toast?'

'Sure.'

When I tried asking, my eldest son agreed easily. He's a reliable guy. Before I knew it, my two-year-old daughter had also woken up, and the two of them ended up making the pizza toast for me.

As soon as I lay a sheet on the oven tray, my daughter immediately starts lining up the bread. I can't help but laugh at the placement, which is so unbalanced that I wonder how she even managed it.

With my energy-depleted brain, I instantly decide what instructions to give to each of the siblings.

“I want to spread it!”

My daughter is perfectly on board.
Actually, it would be tastier to add a little garlic or oregano to the sauce, but today, both the sauce and the ingredients will be kept completely simple.

While my daughter is focused on spreading the ketchup, I show my eldest son a sample of how to cut the ingredients. Bell peppers in rings, and the sausages at a slight angle.

“I get it, I can do it!” my eldest son says, wanting to put it into practice immediately, barely listening to the explanation. Beside him as he works hard with the knife, the ingredients start to take on a rather wild appearance.

The children talk back and forth, saying this and that, as they pile the wild-looking ingredients onto the bread.

The amount of corn, which I hadn't even mentioned, is clearly excessive, and the bell peppers and sausages are practically suffocating under the weight of it, but that's fine. We know that once we add the cheese and bake it, it will wrap up all that imbalance and land perfectly as something delicious.

Five minutes in the oven. The room is immediately filled with the savory aroma of wheat and cheese.

When I call out, “It’s baked,” my five-year-old second son wakes up, and the children gather in front of the oven all at once. When I open the door, they cheer, “Wow!” just as if they had opened a treasure chest.

When my husband wakes up, my eldest son reports happily, “This is what I made!” Watching his proud expression, I think, ah, that’s right...

The children are not just waiting for my breakfast forever. I am not the only one who will always be the “provider.”

“By myself”
“On my own”

Someday, they will move forward like that, increasingly on their own paths.

I know this, yet when I suddenly see this resilient side of my children, my heart aches.

It’s not just about meals. They will make all kinds of choices on their own responsibility. I wonder how much I can broaden those options for them in the limited time I have.

At this very moment, I feel terribly disappointed that I am not healthy. It makes me sad that I cannot laugh together with them and say, “It’s delicious!” about the pizza toast he showed me so proudly. Watching the children gobbling up the pizza toast, I feel a pang of sadness as I busy myself keeping my life going with OS-1.

Looking at the floor, there is a lot of corn scattered about.
Whether it’s the seven-year-old or the five-year-old, there is always some kind of “souvenir” left behind after a meal (and it goes without saying for the two-year-old).

“Good grief,” I think, but at the same time, I vaguely think that I need to get well soon, and start by properly rehydrating.
First, I want to recover enough to be able to prepare breakfast.

It is nice to have the children make breakfast, but tomorrow I want to prepare it myself. For a little while longer, I want to hold onto that role that was once my exclusive privilege.

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#1 The beginning of autumn, and dragon fruit