She's not eating much these days. And she's sad. It's hard to get unsad as she's realizing how much she is forgetting and how her quality of life has suffered. And yet: forty-seven years and two forty something daughters is a whole lotta complicated worn and dirty and yet hopeful love. Not to mention the not yet forty year old son holding down the fort in East Tennessee and his beautiful wife keeping all the kids save for mine who is with my husband at home in Nashville.
Yes. A whole lotta complicated worn and dirty and yet hopeful love.
Love that has spanned generations from teenaged meeting in "town" in Deep East Texas, a first movie date during junior college in which my father's leg fell asleep after the lights came up and he fell flat on his face. There was the wedding during which Mother whispered so low and all in the wedding party followed suit so that folks in the little congregation leaned in close and wished for an earhorn, maybe especially when Mother crossed her fingers during the "obey" line. The wedding during which my grandfather had atypically tied one on and bobbed a bit. The first year of marriage during which Mother has told us she cried every day. Moves to upstate New York and New Mexico and Maryland when the children were born one by one, raised up and loved through California and Tennessee following.
There've been cats and dogs during these near fifty years, and book reports, dance recitals, evenings out with grown ups. There've been years of living abroad, even more years of my father's travel during which Mother was on her own with us for weeks at a time, taking us to matinee shows with scrambled egg sandwiches and strange popcorn and Easter candy trail mixes tucked into baggies in her purse. There have been years of soccer games, neighbors calling and church events, friends dying, life spinning by faster and faster and then weddings of the grown children, the grandbabies coming.....
Yes. A whole lotta complicated worn and dirty and yet hopeful love.
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I love my parents. So much.
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I have the best sister and brother a girl could hope for. We do well together, and we are friends. Our children love each other and like us, they really *like* each other. What blessings.
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Having helped my boy make homemade Valentines for each of his classmates, I did not, for the first year ever, make or even purchase, Valentines for my man and my boy. My Mister, however, came through with chocolates and a beautiful card for me and words that make me weep, "You're the glue of this family, you know that, right?" Also a delightful card for our son, and a CD -- "My first rap music," says our boy with a wonderful smile. I'm putting it on now. The Outkast, rockin' it to Scooby Doo.
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We wrestled last night, as promised, the boy and I. On the big bed, we flung and rolled and laughed and bounced. He announced, just before flinging his seventy pound boy body at me at full speed, "I will conquer the Master of Fright!" This war cry seemed particularly fitting for Valentines day, and for my boy's Diggy, who'd spent the day in the company of her husband and daughters at Vanderbilt, being told that the tumor might not have shrunk and it looks like six months of chemo will follow shortly.....
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At bedtime, prior to resting, our boy -- obsessed with Harry Potter and the idea of having a Potter themed birthday party (in September!) -- had to rise to count the chairs in our home: the number of chairs by his reasoning equaling the number of seats at the party's wand making factory and therefore the number of party guests. I believed he settled on thirteen.
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Love everywhere. Now.
We will conquer the Master of Fright.
Ah, Paige. Beautiful.
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