Warm Fuzzies and Small Miracles

First, the fuzzies.



Baby Pandas. Doesn't get much cuter than that. If you want to feel all gooey inside, go to Zooborns for more cute babies.

So, on the home front, winter continues to hold us in her grip. But. There are small, subtle changes to appreciate, like noticing that it's no longer pitch dark at 5pm and being grateful for the daylight.

The soundtrack to our lives is no longer the dry hacking barking cough we've listened to for three straight unrelenting mind numbing nerve wracking weeks. The sound of the quiet and the joy at returning to something resembling normal is almost impossible to describe. It is nothing less than a small miracle.

We were scheduled to see a speech pathologist Tuesday morning because the ENT said it was our best hope to stop the cough. We waited four long days for the appointment, and when they called the day of to reschedule due to illness, I did what any responsible, strung out mother would do. I cried. I whined. I said you are our only hope, when can we come? A few phone calls later, we were in that day at 5pm. An angel named Cathy stayed late to see us, and I'm not lying when I say I love her. She jumped right in. Showed us a model of the throat and all it's mysterious parts, explained the damage the cough was doing to the cartilage, said it had to stop right now. She said simply, the more you cough, the more you cough. Get it? Your brain is stuck, and you have to make it stop making you cough.

She took Em through three different options, including tiny coughs or throat clearings, breathing exercises to relax the throat, and counting to see how far she could get without a cough. She made Em talk and sing and breathe and relax and sip water and get up and walk and breathe and count and ahem and breathe and before the hour was up, the cough went from continual to 30 seconds apart to a minute to three to a small quiet noise and it was nothing short of a minor miracle to the exhausted parents who watched it happen. (Who had found all these techniques online and had tried them, but not as forcefully, convincingly or assuredly as Cathy, who said the most important ingredient was wanting more than anything for the cough to stop. There's something to be said for professional competence and authority, and the inability of a child to listen to a parent!)

The elation of this breakthrough was marred by the emotional breakdown that ensued when daughter was told she needed to go back to school at once, back to everything, back to her life, and be forced to control the cough, because the less she coughed, the less she would cough. She was petrified to be so far behind in her classes, afraid she'd be embarrassed, afraid her friends wouldn't miss her. I'm estimating it took 5 hours of crying to actually make it through the doors to the school the next day, but she did it. And she was fine. She came home happy and almost back to normal. And she is coughing less and less and less, and the silence is music to my ears.

This parenting gig has never been what I imagined. It is more complicated, mysterious and confounding than anything I have ever done in my life. The teen years are even more complicated and precarious as I remember the train wreck that mine were and try not to let the past repeat itself. All I can do is try, and try some more. And be grateful for what is, and what isn't.

Thanks for sharing this stretch of the journey with me, for offering up kind comments, suggestions, words of encouragement and understanding. I am grateful, thankful and humbled over and over again. Full of warm fuzzies inside, even as the snow falls outside.




XXOO

Good Things

Thanks to Bethany over at Bloom, I'm having a grateful moment here in the frigid midwest. She reminded me of the new bulbs I planted that will bloom in a few months. Here are a few of my favorites from last Spring:






In less than 2 months, they will be back, this time with new tulips and alliums!

Here's another good thing, in a sideways and silly kind of way. Yesterday morning we had a rare earthquake in IL and I live 8 miles from the epicenter. Nothing cracked, nothing broken, just a few of my tinies fell off their shelves and luckily none broken. I've been collecting these since I was about 7 years old. They are my version of treasure:


See the tiny clay critters on the right? The horse and vulture both fell off the shelf but did not break. Those I bought in high school about a million years ago. I always thought I'd get crafty and make such things, but have not yet.

But feeling the earth move beneath you - it's mighty humbling and makes for some serious gratitude. Especially when it sounds like an explosion or bomb happening out your window. I live in a lucky time and place, and I am grateful.

Here's something that's good for me, but sucks for people I love. I'm not here:


Kinda funny, except they got an unprecedented 22 inches of rain last year following the worst drought in ages the year before that, with just under 9 inches. The weather is wreaking havoc on my homeland. Southern or slower Delaware doesn't get much snow, so they weren't prepared to handle the almost 2 feet they got, let alone the 2 inches of sleet on top of that. The news is awful, roofs are collapsing all over the place: Walmarts, Big Lots, churches, schools and over 50 chicken houses so far. Growing chickens is the economic mainstay in the area, besides farming. It is devastating. But my family is safe, and warm, and their roofs are holding, and the weather is letting up, thankfully, so they can begin to dig out.

So hooray for good things, and especially for sunshine and blue skies.



OK, one more good thing. Music. Music!! I'm not named Melody for nothing. I'm happy my music player at the bottom of this page pops out and can hang out with me all morning. Go ahead, help yourself. The little square on the top right pops it out so you can listen too, there's something in there for everyone. I've been enjoying the heck out of some other bloggers' music. Future post fodder.

Thankful anyway

It was not the trip I had planned, to drive 13 hours so I could lay in bed next to my husband, both shivering and coughing for 3 straight days. Beautiful weather, lovely hills, and the flu. Our stomach muscles ache from coughing, heads still ache and stomachs still churn, 8 days later. Ugh, H1N1 sucks. I almost cracked on day 6, fighting the urge to cry like a baby all day. It didn't help that I missed my Dad something fierce, he seemed so present in those hills he loved. Childhood memories flitted through my mind and welled my eyes with tears, which thankfully hid among the sneezes and runny nose.

No, it was not the trip I had planned, but I will count my blessings:

Our kids are old enough to take care of themselves and the dog, allowing us the luxury of our weak, sickly states, and they're either immune, or have already caught it this year, hidden among the littany of sick days this fall.
We were able to make the return drive safely, taking turns while the kids slept, read or pinched each other out of boredom. We show no signs of pneumonia or further complications, despite our lingering symptoms. And best of all, I can stop obsessing and worrying about the lack of vaccines, and the chance that we might get sick. We did, and here we are. One less catastrophe looming in my little worry filled world.

No, it wasn't the Thanksgiving vacation we were looking forward to, but we have much to be thankful for.  Sunshine and scenery, and snow that passed us by, and mostly, each other, in sickness and in health.

When life gives you lemons...

It is raining in Illinois. Again. Still. 23 out of the last 30 days it has rained, more than any October in the last 80+ years. I vaguely remember sunshine.

Today, I quit bitching, put on my wellies and went for a walk in the rain with my dog. Look at the yellows! My front yard  is an oasis, an eruption of yellows and browns with some pink thrown in for fun. Today, I am grateful for the rain that let these colors bloom, and for the snowglobe falling leaf extravaganza. As always, the camera didn't even come close to capturing the depth of color.

I didn't plant these shrubs, they are native viburnums that love the shade of the oak and hickory trees, and the ungodly amounts of rain this month. They remind me of daffodils and narcissus.

I don't remember a fall this pretty since I've lived in the midwest, and I have to thank the rain.

Thanks, rain. But enough already, OK?

My Fall Trees

Fall has come early this year.

October came gloomy, cold and wet.


But today we are gifted with golden sunshine.



My trees look hopeful and lovely, welcoming and protecting, and I live gratefully in their shade. They all reach out to the west, toward the sunsets, which are magnificent.














I wonder, do they talk to each other, guard each other against the winds, the cold, complain about the squirrel and chipmunk circus, the chattering birds that live in their branches, maybe whisper of the owls that sleep silently in the oldest ones?

Do they look sharp when the hawks fly near, protective of the prey, or celebrate the respite from hunger for the hunter, or do they pay little attention to the life around them, focused instead on the sun, the sky, the wind?

I know only a few of their secrets.





Do they mourn the passing of the giant old ones, lost to chainsaws or root fungus, remember them fondly, tell their tales to the younger trees? Do they share their stories, encourage their babies, coo over the acorns?





I would love to sit at their roots and listen to them whisper, remembering back for centuries, before the towns came, before the forests were cleared, before they became relics of a once great tribe.



I will enjoy this sunny day with them, knowing that winter is coming, and wait with them for the Spring.

Kindred Spirits

I can't stay away from the blogs of late, they call to me. I tumble from one to another, savoring the shared sentiments, the crafty turning of phrases, the synergy of minds trying desperately to stay sane in a mad world. I want to have a glass - ok, a bottle of wine with these women and men, one at a time and all at once and tell the truth, share what wisdom or comfort there is to be had, laugh at what we can and cry at what we must. I need my tribe, I have wandered a very long time alone on this earth, left to my thoughts and my worries and my rants. I need to hear the voices sing in chorus, in harmony, to find my way through the darkness in my day.

Thank you to the voices, to the writers who speak to me, and forgive me my reticence. It has taken a while to find my voice, and to believe it might matter what I say. I have forgotten my manners, and must introduce myself, to echo back to you through the interwilderness. Hello, I read what you write, I feel it too. We Are NOT Alone. We ARE NOT Crazy. WE ARE HERE.

:)