...of Christmas Past

Every year we have a Christmas carol sing along party. Here's a snap from 2 years ago. You can see Grandma holding on, and you can see that my better half is a truly talented musician because not only is he accomodating the would be band member but he does so while being used as a jungle gym. Obviously that was not how he'd planned to play.
 Nothing about this year's carol party (tonight) was as I'd planned when I planned it last month. Grandma isn't home, the gymnast now wants to be a piano soloist and I had a house full of people I didn't expect and most everyone I'd expected was missing. There were some loud boys, and small children and jelly filled cookies were carried where they don't belong (punctuation optional).
 But this is a Christmas story so you will not be surprised to hear that I went from dissappointed to resigned toleration (with a just little sainted martyrdom thrown in) to being the recipient (not the giver) of the first real Christmas cheer I'd felt this year bathed in those sweet young voices singing about that nativity. Then they went and sang more to my mother in her rehab room bringing her to thankful tears. You will not be surprised to hear this because at this time of year you can just see the happy ending coming -if it's the Hallmark channel, or a blog at least. But I didn't see it coming and it made me feel kinda giddy. And one of the girls, a younger one, suggested we all pray together and we did and by that time I was definitely 20 something again. Just as silly, just as hopeful, just as ready to go on and on about how good God is and all that.   One of the girls who sang to the end thanked me for opening my home to them and focusing on the "real" Christmas -and I forgot to tell them I hadn't. OK, definitely the best caroling party EH-VER.


Blog from the end of the world

A week ago I woke to hear my husband say my mom had fallen in the ealry morning and the middle son had carried her back to bed. That would be the one with the newly repaired ACL. So I maturely went shopping all day looking for something festive to go with my new red shoes.  We did check in by phone via the eldest son on Grandma but forgot to ask when told she was fine if she could move. She kept telling him she was fine but ... So stuff, calls, ERs, etc. xrays. End of story (world, whatever) she had broken her pelvis on one side and her sacrum and none of it is treatable and lots more stuff and here she was the next day with her straw in the side of the cup invention so she didn't have to tilt it and raise her arm too high. Since I had shopped and then ERed all day I had only heard Christmas songs on the radio and she starts too ramble about terrible shootings and children and I knew, we knew, she was losing it. Lying there in pain all day she had confused some tv movie and the mall shooting and was muddled from the pain and fatigue. I pretty much told her so. And then she said "I'll bet you a nickel," and I wasn't so sure. She never bets unless she's right.

   Still the medical types asked her who the president was at every opportunity, and, as seen in the picture, even on morphine she was clever. At least until no one checked her oxygen sats -or just didn't follow up on the low ones Sunday and the percoset made her loopy and she went from telling us what was going on in the world to no memory of where she was or why these terrible "harpies" (her vocabulary has yet to fail her) were torturing her. Then I got the flu. This is all so minor. But my clever, funny, loving mother angry and fearful and lost and confused, whispering the pain is "a ten, ten" might as well be the end of the world. Just a little world I know, and only mine, and near the end in any case. Just spinning a bit out of control. Or maybe it's the flu... 

 

 So now things are a bit more stable and she is less loopy and I am more and the world didn't end today (yet).