Part 37: Priorities
It used to be different. If you woke up and your throat hurt, if your muscles were heavy and the thermometer showed something you didn’t like, you probably had pulled the covers back over your head and thought, hey, one day without feeling guilty about not going to work. Now you thought rather, all right, fever, muscle aches and sore throat, you don’t have to go to the hospital with that and fortunately there’s paracetamol. This was also the case on Tour 4. Milla and I in Naples. August. Alone. The sun was shining again and last night really sucked. I had headaches and neck pain and was sweating like crazy. I grabbed the child and pushed the stroller through the narrow streets. The light seemed dusty, and in the shadows, Mariannen figures peeked out from wall protrusions. I had sweats. I was slower than the fattest tourists. I finally stopped in front of a church. I stared at a skull and wondered if it was really there or if I had started hallucinating. I then drank a bottle of water, turned back and thought it would be fine if Milla and I slept some more. The people seemed like characters from a historical novel, only the rattle of the Vespas brought me back to the here and now. After three hours in the hotel I still felt like I was exhausted and slowly I understood that. I had a fever of 39 degrees with 32 degrees outside. And an insect bite on the butt. So a paracetamol, wait in bed, look with Milla as long as a book and then she could not stand it inside and it rolled the stroller with Milla again through the same alleys as before. I sweated the temperature down and in the evening light the city suddenly seemed less psychedelic. At some point I ate a pizza and was very happy despite everything.
