Where I’m Writing From: Sick Day
By Eli Cranor
Mar 1, 2026
I’m writing from my office with a sick kid on the floor.
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It’s my son, and he’s not really sick; he just has super bad asthma. Like, so bad he can’t get up and walk around much or he just starts coughing.
The cough is worse at night, which is another reason why he’s not at school. Lack of sleep leads to a weakened immune system, and if you haven’t been in a kindergarten classroom recently, spoiler alert: they’re hotbeds for germs of all shapes and sizes.
So, yeah. Little man is on the floor right now, dressed in his Halloween costume from last year, a full-body Deadpool suit. Instead of wielding akimbo swords, my son is holding his tablet. He’s playing a game that I’m not sure he can see because, yes, he’s also wearing the costume’s mesh mask, which is probably hot and can’t be good for his breathing.
My son; image by Eli Cranor
If his mother saw him right now, she’d kill me, but his mother isn’t here.
His mother is at “work.”
Which means his father got stuck trying to write with Deadpool all day.
Okay. Maybe I’m being overly dramatic. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems, but after seven straight hours of trying to balance my “work” and the needs of my 6-year-old son, I’m starting to lose my patience.
My wife’s patience was already gone when she woke up this morning. She was the one who'd stayed up with him the night before, patting his back and adjusting his nebulizer, while I slept peacefully in the basement.
After pulling the night shift, my wife obviously deserved a break, but that hasn’t made the last seven hours any easier.
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Back when I was a kid with a fever, my mom would go get wonton soup from Tran’s Oriental Palace. We’d curl up together on the couch and watch movies until Dad got home.
My mother, if you can’t tell, was/is a saint. And I’m, for better or worse, a writer. If I don’t spend four-to-five hours at my desk, something doesn’t feel right. Something like the lingering unease I feel now, after dodging my son all day.
Yes, I am a writer, but I’m a father too.
It’s weird, but so many of my other writer friends don’t have kids. It’s no accident. It was a conscious choice, a way for them to remain focused on their work.
After days like today, I understand such logic.
But all it takes is a little time away, one night where the kids are at a sleepover and the house goes quiet — too quiet — for me to miss the thudding of their footsteps overhead, their incessant chatter and silly disruptions.
When I really think about it, when I pause and look back at my career, I realize that I never wrote anything of worth until my kids came along. Their budding lives have given me more material than any amount of research could yield.
And moreover, they have given me a reason to get to work, a constant deadline, a ticking time bomb, always waiting one room over, or in this case, sprawled in a Deadpool costume on my office floor.
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