August 4, 2000

All my life, I’ve heard it said, when someone cuts up or acts immature, “He’s going through his second childhood.” The way I’ve got it figured, my husband must be working on his fourth or fifth one by now.

Could be Mel’s just a late bloomer. You’d think he’d have had childhood diseases when he was a little kid, but instead, he got chicken pox when he was thirty. He denied it, of course, but it happened all the same.

It was the mid-1970s, and we were living near Cleburne, in Johnson County, on our first little 11-acre spread. Eric was in elementary school. I was a postal clerk. We were really involved in our church and, as you often tend to think at that age, we were just pretty much indispensable.

It was early summer. Mel came in, took off his shirt, and laid down on the couch.

“What’s wrong,” I asked?

“I think I got too hot,” he replied. “My head’s swimmin’ an’ I don’t feel so good.”

I fetched a tall glass of ice water and knelt down beside him.

“Here. Take a sip or two of this.”

My husband chugged it down.

“What are these red spots?” I asked, referring to the small bumps scattered across his stomach.

“Skeeter bites, I guess.”

By late afternoon, he said, “I’m comin’ down with a sore throat.”
I noticed the bumps were larger.

“These don’t look like mosquito bites,” I told him.

“Must be chiggers then.”

“You’ve got two on your face. Now tell me how you managed to get chiggers there? Mighty suspicious.”

By the next morning, the bumps had become blisters and my husband was running fever.

“Melvin Ross, you’ve got chicken pox!”

“Do not,” he said. “That’s a kid’s disease.”

“Sure looks like it to me,” I said, dialed up his mother and reporting back to him. “Your mother doesn’t recall if you had chicken pox or not.”

“I must have,” he snapped. “You couldn’t grow up as one of 10 kids and 40 ’leven cousins an’ not get exposed to the chicken pox.”

I inspected his spots again.

“Well that’s what it is. We’re going to have to quarantine you.”

“Can’t do that. I’m s’posed to lead the music at the mid-week service tonight,” he insisted, certain no one else could do it but him.

“I’ll call right now so they’ll have time to make other arrangements.”

Next morning, people started calling to see what was wrong. Each time I explained that Mel had chicken pox, he was in the background protesting, “I do NOT have the chicken pox!”

This went on for several days. Every time Mel heard the words “chicken pox,” it set him off again. “How many times do I have to tell you, I DON’T HAVE THE CHICKEN POX!” he’d growl.

Sunday morning came and Mel was determined to go to church, despite his scabs. A bout that time, Eric came into our bedroom, rubbing his eyes.

“Mama, I don’t feel good,” he said.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

He pointed to some spots on his tummy and whispered, “I think I have what Daddy doesn’t have.”