We awoke this morning to at least 13 inches of thick, heavy snow sparkling in the morning sun. It looks like a fairyland outside and perfect for snowmen and sledding and building igloos and snowball fights.

Somewhat tragically, we are not able to enjoy any of these activities, nor did we make it to the �Peter and the Wolf� concert, to which AJ has been looking forward eagerly for weeks. He woke up with a temperature of 102, and so is spending the day lying around the house. He was horribly disappointed and cried for a long time, but he has recovered and, thanks to a little stealth medication, his fever is gone for the moment. We played a recording of �Peter and the Wolf� this morning instead and looked at the pictures in the little French children�s book version of it that I�ve had since childhood.

When I was nine and a very eager beginning violin student, my father had surprised me with entrance to a closed dress rehearsal of the London Symphony where Sir Isaac Stern was to be performing. Someone he worked with was married to a horn player with the symphony and she pulled a few strings. I was going to be able to meet Stern in person and I was very, very excited. The morning of the rehearsal, I woke up with a temperature of 104. I begged and pleaded to be allowed to go anyway, but of course my mother said no. I spent the day in bed with cold towels on my forehead listening to the radio and leafing disconsolately through books. When I was feeling a little better, my mom came in with the big blue book in its slipcovered case that we knew as �The Special Book.� The Special Book was an anthology of children�s stories and poems with particularly beautiful illustrations, some in full color. I never paid attention to its real name, which was much less poetic. It was special because we only got to look at it when we were sick. Then we could pick out whatever we wanted to read and my mother would read it to us. Or if our hands were clean, we could hold the book and read to ourselves.

The Special Book had been my mother�s Special Book when she was a little girl. Her mother used to take it off her shelf when the girls were home sick. My mother got her own copy at some point that she read to us. When my mother moved out of her house a couple of years ago, her copy of The Special Book came to me. I think it gets more special with each generation. This morning I pulled it from the shelf and carried it upstairs in its slipcover so that AJ could take the book out of its box, as I used to like to do. He was too tired to pick his own stories this morning, so I read him one that had always been my first choice on those days when I was stuck in bed: �The Land of Counterpane� from Robert Louis Stevenson�s �A Child�s Garden of Verses�:

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

AJ was similarly charmed by the verse and by its accompanying illustration of a tired looking boy propped up in bed with little houses and a church and armies of soldiers tucked in and around his knees on his bedcovers. I think it helped him remember there were adventures to be had at home as well. This was what I liked about it when I was little.

AJ has just come in to say, �Mommy, I think all the white blood cells have killed all the germs in my body.�

�I�m glad you�re feeling better, AJ,�

�Let�s play!�

How can I turn down that request?

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