Category: Family

In the Land of the Whirling Dervish

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Five minutes has gone by since I typed that subject line. In trying to decide what I would title my summation of yesterday, I thought up that particular subject. And then, in a stroke of genius, I thought I would begin the post with a very official definition of the term “whirling dervish,” which I was 100% convinced was a fancy, technical term for “Tasmanian devil.” This is a true story. I thought, “whirling dervish” = “Tasmanian devil.” Am I the only 40-yr-old human under this particular rock?

I am so shocked to find that a whirling dervish is a crazed, dancing, Muslim monk.

From Dictionary.com
–noun
“A member of any of various Muslim ascetic orders, as the  Sufis, some of which carry on ecstatic observances, such as energetic dancing and whirling or vociferous chanting or shouting.”
I mean, I am totally shocked. Totally.
Really shocked.
They don’t just engage in whirley dances. They do vociferous chanting. Vociferous, people.
This is what I thought a whirling dervish was.
And this is what one actually is.
I guess you can learn new fun facts at any age. I’ll be more careful how I describe my children in the future. The former clip really describes my household more accurately.
Especially yesterday.
Especially after 2:30.
Up until school got out, I was sluggish and struggling to keep up with my duties for the day. I was scheduled to pick up two extra kids from school, so I did that. I gave everyone an ice cream snack, because nothing says ‘calm household’ like 6 kids full of chocolate. We got homework done.  And from that moment on, it’s like I was surrounded by Tasmanian dervishes. Or whirling monks.
There’s so much to tell that I think I will have to just hit the highlights.
I have a new buddy. Javaris. He’s in AG’s class. He’s a really sweet kid and everyone in the family likes having him around. This is good, since he’s always around. Now he even eats with us. And his cousin does, too. But back to that in a moment. Javaris was over. And Darius. And everyone seemed to be interested in the hamsters. This must have been shocking for the poor little beasts, because they’d enjoyed a period of peaceful waning interest lately and hadn’t had to fight off the grubby, fat paws of my children. SnuggleMonkey was a bit of a hazard with the hamsters and had one of them in the orange ball, chasing it all over the downstairs. So our very beloved house guest, we’ll call her Blemma (man, that’s a good name), rescued the hamster and put her back in the box. And then Blemma and I proceeded to chat in the doorway to the kitchen. Over Blemma’s shoulder I could see a flash of movement from the hamster, which is not unusual after a child  has driven her crazy. So I kept talking. But that flash of activity turned into a flurry of very uncommon behavior. And that’s when I noticed it.
Both hamsters were in the same box.
Maybe you don’t know that hamsters are not social creatures. Unless you consider instant mating or death a social behavior. I suppose you could make a strong argument for one of those. But our hamsters are sisters and sisters don’t socialize.
They were fighting.
And if we hadn’t interrupted them, we’d have a very dead Olive on our hands.
Since I don’t deal well with such urgent matters, I immediately began to scream in nonsensical words. “Ohhhhhhh, hey….guys…..help…arrrrrrrr……pggggggggg.” I finally managed to screech out, “Help! The hamsters are together!” Then I ran into the dining room, where most domestic rodents are stationed, and placed the top of the box vertically down into the box to separate the hamsters. Then AG and Javaris picked up the little underdog to inspect her.
She was wounded.
Bloody paws. Cuts on her side. No other damage.  I made a joke about neosporin and then went to Google what I should do to help this hamster.  It said to clean the wound with water, peroxide, and apply neosporin.
And that’s what we did.
The 3-yr-old wandered in to ask, very indignantly, how the hamsters had ended up in the same box. We decided as a group to blame her, the 3-yr-old. It just seemed like what needed to happen. No, we didn’t. We just pretended not to hear her.  Just kidding again. I think I just feigned confusion and walked on. Except I really was confused.
About this time, the potatoes needed to be browning in a skillet. So I started this process. My phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize and I was expecting an important call, so I took it. The potatoes were moved off the heat, I removed myself to the porch, and the whirling, dancing monks carried on with their vociferous chanting inside.
Twenty minutes passed. A very critical twenty minutes, if you have 7 kids in the house and a 6:30 cub scout meeting to attend. There was no skipping that meeting. He was getting his Bear rank, his pinewood derby medal, and some belt loops.
Somehow, in the midst of all of that, we sat down to eat. And Javaris and Darius sat down, too. On the fly. We prayed. We ate. We laughed. We destroyed the kitchen. Only two of us made it to the cub scout meeting and even then, they were 30 minutes late for it.
After AG and his dad left for the meeting, and Darius and Javaris went home, I was alone in a kitchen that looked like a band of 14-year-old boys had tried to cook a Thanksgiving feast in it using materials from 1812. I hardly knew where to start. But I loaded the dishwasher. I washed the remaining dishes by hand. And then I decided to mop. While the mop water was filling the sink, I figured I would use my time to vacuum the rest of the downstairs.
Sorta forgot about that mopping business. When I remembered, I had this to contend with.
The picture doesn’t do justice to the 1/8th of an inch left before the Red Sea spilled over onto my dirty kitchen floor. I guess that wouldn’t be the worst thing, but it’s also not the most efficient way to mop.
And then I threw the gyrating monks into their beds and asked them to chant less vociferously.
That’s the last thing I remember. The rest is fuzzy.
All I know for sure is I went biking tonight in my pajamas and I’m pretty sure that’s not  okay.

Sermon Notes for those under 50″

.Reading time 1 minute.

Todd is working on Snappshots for me. I sure hope it’s bright purple and automatically plays Yanni for anyone who pops over to say hello.
No, I don’t hope that.
I hope you don’t hope that, either.
If you are a purple Yanni lover, I have nothing to offer you. Sorry, Justin Bieber, I know purple is your thing. Perhaps Yanni is, too. But you are so much richer than him. And better in every way, really.

It’s a bad day in Cyberspace when you veer off on a Justin Bieber, Yanni, purple tirade.

The following photograph illustrates a recent creative endeavor by Mama’s Boy. He leaned over to me in church one day recently and whispered, “Can I write in these blanks?” I answered ‘sure.’ He then said, “Can I write anything I want in them?” Sure, I said again. And when he was done, he handed it to me. I had a very difficult time containing myself. You know how much funnier things are when you are in church, right? Well, picture yourself in a quiet church building, on a red cushioned pew, with a speaker up front. If you can do that, the following photo will seem funnier. Pretend we’re in church together.

Simple Phonics Translation Table:
Keroty = karate
sowkeen = I HAVE NO IDEA. If you figure it out, there’s a small cash reward for you.
mnuken = mannequin
enomys = enemies

Better site coming soon.

For lack of better material…

.Reading time 1 minute.

AG has become the neighborhood pied piper. He plays outside a lot and kids just somehow end up in our yard. Last week, I came outside and found an 8 year old on my roof. That was shocking. He shimmied up a Ligustrum tree, hopped onto the roof, and retrieved the yellow frisbee that was up there. All in a day’s playtime, I suppose. I just know I’m going to get sued out of all of this.

At any rate, at the end of every afternoon, the boys are sweaty. Nasty. And they have entire construction sand piles in the bottoms of their shoes. How do they even play with that going on in the bottom of their shoes?

So, I ushered them into the showers last night right after dinner. And Mama’s Boy stay gone a long time. I had to go retrieve him. And this is what I came upon. There is no nudity in this clip. Only oddity.

Good day to you. Fare thee well.

The Stuff Kids Say

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Art Linkletter had his whole Kids Say the Darndest Things fame. And I love that stuff. But I don’t let my kids say darn or darndest, so we don’t listen to that much around here. I know. I’m a prude. Sometimes.

I used my status on Facebook last night to poll people on funny things you never expected to say or hear as a parent. I’m going to post those responses in several different categories. I’ll warn you before we get to bodily functions, so my mother-in-law can stop reading if she wants to. Actually, let me just warn you now. It seems you can’t have the small child without the Gross. So if you are of weak stomach constitution, just skip this post entirely and return tomorrow for more refined material. Sorry!

I really love it when a kid either messes up a word or just says something quirky in a dead serious way.

For instance:
Mama’s Boy:
I don’t want to take a bath tonight. I’m afraid I’m going to have quesadilla. (What? Oh, he meant diarrhea. He’d been sick.)

Or, one child having had the “quesadilla” turned around to survey the situation and said, “Look Mama, I made coffee.”

One day I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating lunch with Mama’s Boy when he looked up from his plate and said, quite seriously, “Mama, what if every person in the world was named Uncle Doo Doo?” Honestly, I think I could live in that world…though I recognize the complications it might create.

Franklin, my nephew, peering into the toilet after being sick in it, said, “Huh, I guess I ate a sticker.” There was an apple sticker floating…

Things parents wouldn’t have imagined themselves saying:

Whose poo poo is this?
We don’t eat our own poo poo!
We don’t paint the windows with our poo poo!
We don’t bite other people’s toes.
The rule is, you only grab your own wiener. Nobody’s else’s.
You can touch your own boobies. But you can’t touch other people’s.
We don’t EVER lick the toilet seat! EVER!
So what were you thinking while you were slinging the poop water?
Who wants to do a naked run?
Kids, come to the car. Daddy will bring your rats after he checks out.
Please don’t throw Squeaky Manatee in the cheese sauce.
Please don’t wipe your snot on me.
Come here. I need to dig that booger out of your nose.
There is no reason why your hand should be in the toilet.
Hey! Are you putting bouncy balls in the toilet? No bouncing balls in the toilet!
Get your mouth off the sting ray tank!
Kid: Can I have some pizza? Adult: After you eat your cake.
Hey Mama. I have a riddle. If you get the right answer, you get to tell me what I’m getting for Christmas.

Things parents wouldn’t have thought they’d hear from their kids:

Why are there rocks?
What is yet?
Dad, you have glue on your arm. Or snot.
Dear God, thank you for our sins.
“If we see a stunk (skunk), we should all go get our swords (we don’t have any) and kill the stunk.”
‎”My stinky smells like eggs! I didn’t know stinky could smell like eggs!”
One child talking to another: “Yeah, we’re going to Utah.” The response: “Utah! Is that your grampa?”

And since I’ve totally grossed you out with some of your own submissions, I will try to redeem this only slightly with an excerpt from Art Linkletter:

A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.

The girl replied, ‘I’m drawing God.’
The teacher paused and said, ‘But no one knows what God looks like.’
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, ‘They will in a minute.”

On Being a Mom – Part Two

.Reading time 4 minutes.

It seems strangely coincidental that Mother’s Day weekend falls at the end of the worst week of sickness my family has ever had. It’s true that we were deemed The Vom Snapps by friends at church because of our reputation for violent stomach illnesses. But it’s also true that this has changed somewhat as the kids have grown older. In fact, it had been just under 2 years since the last real battle with the stomach junk. But as you know only too well, last week the kids fell to it. And for days on end, I ran back and forth, up and down, wiping chins, holding bowls, holding children, scrubbing carpets, doing sheets at 2 a.m. and worrying. I don’t remember a harder week. But the one thing I can say about a week like this is that a mom’s focus changes and anything superfluous gets set aside. The calendar clears. The car doesn’t leave the driveway. The laundry and toilets stay clean, because they absolutely must stay clean for the comfort of all the infirm. And somehow, though the people are suffering, everyone is at peace. I wouldn’t wish this nasty germ on anyone, but I did get some simple glimpses into what matters. And I’m thankful for that.

It is also strangely ironic that I have four children packed into less than 7 years on this Mother’s Day of my 40th year. Because 10 years ago, on Mother’s Day weekend of 2001, I had no children. I couldn’t have children. And I was pretty much tortured over that fact. I had learned to cope (I paid good money for this learning), but I had not learned to stop wishing. Every moment. I can hardly remember life before I was a mom, but I can tell you that there was a time when I could not imagine ever being allowed to be one.

Missy’s Top Ten Reasons Why it Rocks to be a Mom
10. I was infertile. For YEARS.  So just becoming someone’s mom was a miracle I was unable to attain on my own.
9. Quiet is overrated. I’ll have the last 20 years of my life, as a deaf, senile, sanatorium-dweller for quiet. No one will visit me there, but I imagine Mama’sBoy will pay the monthly bill.
8. Dried, crusty play-doh is exciting. Also exciting is trying to identify crusty things on the family room carpet as I navigate barefooted.
7. The element of surprise! The fact that at any moment, a child could announce “that person is fat” in a grocery store or “why is that lady so naked” in a public parking lot makes every day spontaneously fun and exciting.
6. It’s fun to spend $2200 to fly.
5. Squeeze hugs.
4. Kissing a wee one on the mouth and coming away with a trail of mucous. Sweet.
3. Gathering on the red couch to wait out a thunderstorm together. There’s nothing  better than snuggling with the kids during a storm.
2. Reading in the loft together.
1. Seeing how much better God’s plans are than my own.

Smiley things

.Reading time 4 minutes.

As shameful as I feel this statement is, it does reflect where we’ve been this week. Here it is. I must own it.

I read a People Magazine from COVER to COVER today.

I mean that quite literally. I read every.single.page. From the Scoop about Patrick Dempsey’s Hawaiian vacation to the story about the deaf dachshund to the pictures of the best and worst hats at the royal wedding. I even read the really disturbing IAMS cat food ads. I plan to scan that one in so you can be disturbed, too. But not tonight. That would require effort and I have none of that.

One thing that made me chuckle was in the deaf dachshund article. As you might imagine, this was not the cover story. We’re talking page 108 here. At any rate, they were having trouble finding a good home for this dog, because he was deaf and barked incessantly. The quote I liked was: “What in the heck was I going to do with a deaf weiner dog?” If I only had a nickel for the times I’ve asked myself this question.

I also got a chuckle from a quote from the Bible. The Bible is not my normal source for comedy, but every now and then you get some growth AND comedy.

2 Chronicles 9:21:  21 The king had a fleet of trading ships manned by Hiram’s servants. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.

The apes and baboons thing really threw me. I wasn’t expecting that. And I laughed. It was just so precise. Returning every three years and each time carrying apes and baboons. That sounds fun. Also terrifying.

And finally, I will leave you with the only thing I’ve left you with for days now: Ick. We were sitting around the dinner table as a family for the first time in a long time, due to illness. Beloved was a mess today. I forced her to let me carry her outside for a few minutes before dinner, so she could soak in just a tad of sunshine and maybe grab some Vitamin D from the air. Then, like a surgery patient, I forced her to walk the circle of our downstairs. And then we tried to force her to eat, because she hasn’t eaten in 2 days and because she seemed to be wasting away. That seemed to be going really well, right to the end when it seemed to go terribly awry. She started to sputter a bit and got that deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. I know that look. Her lips were pursed shut. I jumped up, shoving my chair backwards across the kitchen floor with my very functional posterior. Then I did a little tribal dance, as I surveyed my possible receptacles. Finally, I just nabbed a regular soup bowl out of the cabinet and in one swift motion, swiveled Beloved around to face away from the table and held the bowl under her chin as she did what she apparently had to do. Clean, efficient, professional. The rest of them continued eating. And then I heard Mamasboy, chatting as if this was a regular occurrence:

“Man. Mama’s fast. I’d still be standing there looking for something, if it was me.”

I laughed at that. If all you do in a day is hold a bowl, it’s nice to be recognized for how stinkin’ good at it you are. Thanks, boy.

I’m going back to bed now. Tomorrow is totally a new day. Totally.

Amusement

.Reading time 4 minutes.

I wish I could find some. This has been a grueling week around my house. I’m sleeping in 45 minute stretches and burning calories around the clock. A night hasn’t gone by where laundry wasn’t started in the wee hours of the morning. And my Beloved hasn’t had any solid food since Monday at noon. She can’t afford to lose weight. She only weighs about 28 pounds as it is.

I wasn’t quite asleep last night when I heard the Little Munch crying on the monitor. I went running, because I am still in Emergency Response Mode. Good thing I was fast because there was complete carnage. Really? She started this whole thing. How do you get sick, get well, and then get sick again? I guess this shouldn’t baffle me. There is a word they made up just for this one thing: Relapse.

Can you tell I haven’t slept? This is really boring and poorly written. Sheeee.

So I went to CVS last night to purchase a card and a few little things for Teacher Appreciation Week. When I got to the check out counter, the cashier said, “If you purchase 2 more cards, you get one of our sprays for free.” And she waved her hand along the display of sprays in metal colored canisters, like the girl who did not get hired when they hired Vanna White.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I really don’t have any more cards to buy.” It sure seemed like that should have ended the matter. But it didn’t.

“It doesn’t have to be Mother’s Day,” the girl said. “It can be any type of cards. Birthday….graduation…” She was waiting. Waiting for me to get an Aha Card Buying Inspiration. Waiting for me to say, “Oh wait. I forgot about the other 2 cards I need. Let me go stand in that card aisle for another 20 minutes, grimacing because your choices are so terrible and your poetry makes me want to give into the stomach virus that is raging inside my house.”  I didn’t have that moment. And I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I just said,

“No, thanks. I don’t need the cards.” Again, this was a matter-ending statement. There was no opening for more spray talk. Except that she kept going.

“Well, would you like to buy one of our sprays? I think they are $1.99.”

I was now completely confused by this line of questioning. My face took on a mask of bewilderment and horror. What? How could you still think I want a spray? This isn’t just a problem with your bad cards and me not wanting to go all the way to the back of the store to pick out two more. This is a situation where I.Don’t.Want.Spray. In fact, I have no idea, to this moment, what the spray even was. What kind of spray? Breath spray? Under Arm Enchantment Spray? Pheromones? What? What is so magical about this spray?

She finally gave it up and just rang me up for the Andes Mints I wanted. Seriously.

And then I laid down and entered the Vortex I can’t seem to shake. I was up most of the night. Some of that was spent holding a bowl under Beloved’s chin. Some of it was spent running up and down the stairs to help the Loose Cannon. And some of it was spent doing laundry.

I bet if I had just gotten the spray this wouldn’t still be happening. You think?

The Exhale

.Reading time 3 minutes.

I did not sleep in my running shoes.

I did sleep a little, I think. God has protected me both from this virus and from shutting down in the days and days of not sleeping. I am thankful.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Beloved stopped losing her water droplets 10 minutes after she drank them. I was thankful to be waking up for false alarms. False alarms are a lot less messy than the actual alarms. I think the last incident we had occurred on the sleeping bag that was protecting the bed. I balled it up and took it to the laundry at some ridiculous hour in the middle of the night. When I returned to it, an hour or so later (I’m all about staying on top of the Laundry Mountain Range), it was in shreds. It is an Ozark Trail from Walmart. I didn’t read the tag. Surely it doesn’t say to not wash it, because no human with even 1/16 of a brain would invent a sleeping bag that can’t be washed. Have you read about Boggy Bottom Ranch? You have to wash these things. So, no, I didn’t read the tag and yes, I’m dragging that wet tattered sleeping bag back to Sam Walton with my palm outstretched. Give me back my money, dude. I like to camp.
In sleeping bags.
That have been washed.

At any rate, things settled down after that. I am wearing clean clothes today and think I may just take a gander at some make up. I know. We are living crazy on the edge around here.

Do you know Pioneer Woman? Surely, you must. If you don’t, go to her blog (www.thepioneerwoman.com). Click the Confessions tab, and at the end of her Quarters post, leave a comment with a charity name that could benefit folks in the South that suffered from tornadoes. If you can’t think of any, she makes a few suggestions. Red Cross is always a stand-by. She is giving away 25 cents per comment to this post. She already has in excess of 16,000 comments, so we are up past $4,000 for people in Alabama. She’ll count the comments on Friday and base her gift on that number. She has plenty of money and she uses her influence for good. So by leaving a comment, you can ‘give’ without actually sticking your own 25 cents into an envelope and mailing it to People in Alabama, Towns in Alabama, AL, Zip Codes that go to Alabama.

You can do that whole quarter in the envelope, too, but I think we’d need to be more specific somehow. If we all did something, just think.

I’m going to put on my running shoes now. I hope God blesses your corner today.

Singularity of Purpose

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Today is one of the longest, busiest, most physically taxing days in my recent memory. And yet, at the end of it I feel peaceful and fulfilled and content. That sounds a little bit wackadoodle, but after I thought about it, it made perfect sense.

Upon waking this morning, I had a purpose. Assess the kids. Make the sick people comfortable. Clean up behind them. Try not to get sick yourself. Stay ahead of the trail of destruction. While there were many pieces to my purpose, there was really only one goal: Get past this. However you have to.

The method of operation has been to put out the hottest fire first, clean up the nastiest mess before dealing with the next thing, and hold who needs holding. When my mother-in-law, who was supposed to fly out this morning, showed up sick, she asked me not to hold her. In fact, I think the message was to not touch her to get near her in any way. In fact, she punched me. No, she didn’t. Surely you don’t believe a thing I say. But if I had tried to wipe her chin or pick her up, she might have punched me. And she’s strong. Some of you have seen her arm wrestle. So I didn’t mess with that.

At any rate, she got sick and the flight had to be changed. We felt really bad about that, but we don’t mind having them for another two days. Even if we do all look like death. Even if we are wearing our underfixins on the outside of our clothes. It’s all good.

Mamasboy was over the worst of it and just recovering today. AG went off to school without a hitch. I was doing laundry and trying to get ahead of the messes that come in a week like this one. Beloved woke up excited about school, but as we were about to put her in the car to go, she started crying and saying she didn’t feel good. I had already been down this road with her. She is just a teensy, tinesy, itsy, bitsy bit dramatic. And she likes to be pampered. So I was skeptical. However, given the vast amount of germ transfer going on in this family, the better part of wisdom said to keep her home. And my mom the doctor said to keep her home. So I did. And I called her a Faker. Twice. I was so sure she was milking it that I continued chopping celery after I heard my name spoken through tones of distress. But before you Tsk Tsk me to death, realize that I hear my name through tones of distress about 176 times in an 8-hr period. I believe I have earned the right to finish my celery chopping. This time it was real and the celery should have waited. She was throwing up. A lot. All over my bed. That’ll teach me to chop celery. That little move cost me an hour of laundry and an awful lot of grossness.

From that point on, I was moving in hyperdrive. There was a lot more laundry. There was four times the amount of Bowl Holding and Chin Wiping. And there was still the celery there waiting. Celery won’t chop itself, you know. The whole celery thing was part of my master plan to cook homemade chicken noodle soup today.  But after Beloved fell to the Germ, there was hardly a 10 minute period without a crisis.

When I made my 6th pilgrimage to the laundry room, arms full of disease, I discovered that the detergent was gone. It had fallen behind the washer. Nice. One very stiff pair of tongs, a lot of grunting and sweating, and a stone bruise later, I had the 6th load running. Then I put on my best socks and running shoes, because clearly the barefoot route was no longer working.

I got that celery done. And the soup got made and eaten. And I enjoyed it.

And as I typed the words about being peaceful and content and fulfilled in that first paragraph, I was frantically summoned and informed that Beloved had thrown up all over my just-washed sheets. Kick in the knickerbockers. So. Load #7 is washing now and Beloved is laying on a sleeping bag covered awkwardly by a soft, green blanket. She is drinking water. And she thinks that water is going to stay down.
But I know better.

I’m sleeping in these running shoes. And I’m thinking about changing my clothes.
Tomorrow.

But my whole point to this point was GOING TO BE that the thing that makes a day like this one work is the singularity of purpose. We aren’t pulled in 1000 directions. We have one goal. Get through it and help the one who needs it most. Well, help everyone. But start with the one who needs the bowl and has the worst aim.

Oh, forget it. There’s no point to this post. But I seriously am sleeping in my running shoes. If I sleep at all.

Somebody got his number

.Reading time 3 minutes.

I am sitting here in my brown chair lamenting the fact that I am awake, since I spent much of last night holding a throw up bowl under Mamasboy’s chin. However, I am not lamenting the REASON I am still up. I am waiting to hear what the President has to say about the fact that Osama bin Laden has been killed. We all remember where we were when this whole terror thing started. I was in my beloved Honda CRV on the way to Ben’s 2nd birthday party. My oldest and only child, AG, was rear facing in an infant car seat. He was 4 months old.

I couldn’t find a song on any radio station because the news people just kept talking. I didn’t know what they were talking about. It was the worst thing they’d seen in 30 years of their journalism careers. What? What’s the worst thing? I had a cell phone. I called home. My husband and parents-in-law were dolling themselves up for the same birthday party, but hadn’t left home yet.

“Turn on the TV,” I said to Todd. “Something huge has happened. Tell me what it is.”

And that’s when the sick feeling set in and the news unfolded. The three still at home sat there in horror and watched the second plane hit and the towers collapse. I listened to things on a loud speaker in the lobby of the clubhouse where the party was held. I couldn’t help but note the contrast that day. Inside, there were Oreo sundaes and gifts and drooling babies running around. Outside in the lobby, there was speculation that a war had begun. And the bad news just kept coming. I walked back into that party room and looked at my tiny son, still strapped in his carrier. He was wearing blue keds and a party hat that dwarfed his tiny bald head. What kind of world are you going to grow up in? I had to ask myself. When I had awakened that morning, this question had clear answers. Now, the game was changing.

Ten years later, it is May 1 and I am watching the news report that they have killed the man that started this whole mess. And oddly enough, I am watching this with my husband and parents-in-law. I hope the game is changing again. I hope there will be less terror and more peace. I hope the President will come out and say something before I pass out. I hope.