All in a Day (Two)

(If you missed Part One of this post, click here)

My daughter’s text from fifty miles away alerted me to the weather issue developing outside my window about the same time my iphone started vibrating to the Mirimba. The call was coming in from Em’s best friend – Meg, who lives 35 miles south of me. For someone who always sounds most chipper and calls me Mrs., there was a surprising urgency in her voice. “Are you in your basement? You need to go to your basement.”

“No,” I answered the question before she blurted the statement. The statement to which I replied “Yes, I know,” just having caught on to what my daughter’s text and her friend’s phone call was about.

I switched on the TV in the kitchen. The screen displayed an atmospheric map of Connecticut with large colorful blobs splattered over my area - north central. These indicated tornado warnings in my area. Actually closer than my area. The most intense splatters were just over the airport I lived close enough to walk to. The meteorologist matter-of-factly stated, “ If you live in any of these towns go to your basement. Turn your TV volume up and go . . .”

I scooped up the dog, and took stairs I had avoided for days into the cellar dampness. I crouched  under a table pushed against the cement wall. Sitting cross-legged on a plastic bin cover challenged every muscle in my healing leg that, once again, felt tight from hip to toe. I texted back to Em.

Tense muscles. Tense moments. Yet, I remained calm. Being able to keep in touch with Em and Meg through the storm helped. Plus, it was traveling in Em's direction. I couldn't go through her labor for her, less than two weeks ago, but maybe I could sort of model what she might have to do  - head to the basement with Patrick and a friend who was visiting - when the storm passed her way. Besides, except for the sound of heavy pounding rain, it felt perfectly fine in my basement.There was no sound of wind gusting or, what might have pressed my panic button - the sound of a rushing train.

 I got through the ten or so minutes the meteorologist said to sit in the basement, under a mattress (in my case, a table), texting and playing with the dog. And then I saw the sun shine through the small rectangle of the basement window.

Phew.

The dog and I headed upstairs, to the smell of baked chicken fingers. I had set the toaster oven on/off timer. They hadn't burned.  And the cloud burst was beginning to lose intensity   as it traveled due east toward Boston. There'd be no danger in the more northeastern Massachusetts hills tonight and less complaint about an aching leg in North Central Connecticut. 

  

All in a Day (One)

Some days usher in more lessons than others. The most-inspiring ones are pretty obvious, like sixteen days ago when my grandson Patrick arrived. Everyone in his extended family – from his great grandmother to his cousins to even my cousins’ children (which would make them his cousins twice removed) took pause that day, awestruck over the miracle of  life’s beginnings.

Some of us were reminded of life's ending too, especially remembering those who could not be with us for Patrick’s birth. I wonder what my very dear friend thought, after hearing I had just become a grandmother. Just a day or two earlier her father passed away on, believe it or not, the same day he was born . Just hours before his 90^th birthday party was about to begin.

There are days that speak in more subtle ways. For three of those days now, I’ve been nursing a pulled gluteus – of all muscles! This has made me a grumbler more than a wonderer. The malady has kept me from seeing my little grandson, making me a very unhappy cramper (one whose muscle is cramped :/).  I’ve had to relegate myself to the first floor of my home and, at night, to a recliner instead of a bed -  which would be even more uncomfortable to try to sleep in. (As if sleep were really a possibility in the recliner).

Though I had a difficult time last night, partly swigging water and two extra-strength Tylenol twice in twelve hours, partly in a tub of warm water, partly propped awkwardly atop a  heating pad, partly in the already mentioned recliner, and partly pacing the floors, which was more comfortable than reclining in the chair, you can imagine my surprise when mid-afternoon today, I began to feel just a bit better. Enough, that is, to reduce the painkillers down to one every four hours and feel as if I had reached a threshold of sorts.  The worst of this pain in the rear (and down my leg) was over. I’d be back to my routine and able to see Patrick in a day or so.

I began my celebration of sorts by starting to prepare chicken fingers for dinner. It felt so good having some interest in preparing a real meal again. (Cereal, yogurt, and bananas only go so far when you are convalescing). Egging, coating, and placing the breast tenders in a pan seemed as comforting as the meal it would provide.

I had just put the chicken in a small toaster oven when my daughter texted a four-tiered message to me from her home just 50 miles away - an answer to an earlier text from me , followed by some more attention-getting news.

 There was a storm brewing - and an unexpected day's lesson riding on its tail.

To read Part Two All in a Day post, click here.