OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Twenty One SITTING IN BED

I did everything from my bed today - phone calls, listening to Trump's surreal tweets and recent sexual scandals on the radio, all e-mails and course work.  I even watched TV.  The marvels of owning a lap top computer.   What would I have done in yesteryear?   Stare out the window, read, knit...  I am reminded of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem:

The Land of Counterpane

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. 

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Land of Counterpane by Jessie Wilcox Smith from A Child's Garden of Verses

Stevenson was a sickly child born to an Edinburgh, Scottish engineering family.  His early experience of spending hours in bed may very well have lead to his becoming a writer instead of following in the family tradition.   Day spent in bed can have pleasant memories like this poem, but what is hidden is the heartache of a sickly child who can't run and play with the others.   I am ever grateful that for now I am not permanently consigned to bed - just for a few days of much needed respite.