My family is experiencing the flu.  Although it does not happen every Easter, it has happened often enough around Easter to make it seem a little like an Easter curse.

At Easter, we do the family rounds, have some lovely meals, and then at some point in the wonderful lengthy chocolate haze weekend someone vomits.  After the first one has their moment, I spend lots of time wishing and hoping that it was over indulgence (Please, please, please. Let it be that they only ate too much).  To date that hasn’t been the case.

Why when an illness involves horrible sounds and nasty clean up it happens when everyone is asleep?  The groan of ‘Mom?’ followed by loud expressions of an unhappy gastrointestinal track is not a pleasant way for anyone to wake up.  Anyway, even though I am usually the last one to get the circulating illness, the girls and I got it first.  We all came down with the flu within hours of each other.  Kind of like dominoes.  The girls and I have/are recovering and now it is working its way through the boys.

In the wee hours of the morning, after tending to my younger son in his moment of need, I was unable to immediately get back to sleep.  I got to thinking about the flu.  I was remembering a huge out break of the flu at the turn of the twentieth century.  Still cosy in bed and armed with my iPad I looked it up.

I am pretty sure the only reason I know about the huge influenza out break of 1918 is because one of my favourite artists, Egon Schiele, died from it.  What got me on an information hunt was why so many people died.  I love information hunting.  I find out what I want but there are also so many other things to learn tangentially.  So I found out why it was called the Spanish Flu (it didn’t originate in Spain, it was just because of how news was reported during the war).  More people died from it then the Black Death (approximately 20,000,000).  There were all these amazing bits of information about where it originated, why it spread so rapidly, was so virulent, theories on how it evolved into the strain it was and why it stopped, and what people learned from that event so there wouldn’t be a repeat.  It was fascinating.

Well, my eldest son is now feeling ill and has yet to have his moment.  I am encouraging him to try and have his unpleasant experience before bedtime.  You know teenagers though, they never do as you ask.  I wonder if I will be inspired at the wee hours of the morning to do some more hunting.