I’ve written before about the craziness of parenthood. I forgot to mention the craziness of being the child in the relationship. The past 24 hours with my own parents and my mother-in-law have been the kind of day that makes me shake my head in amazement and ask, “What next?!!!”
First, my father was admitted to the hospital yesterday for emergency gall bladder surgery. That was a shock. He is only 62 and is in good health. I spent most of yesterday at the hospital. Fortunately, the surgery went well. My mom is there to help him. He should recover just fine. I am very thankful.
Next, we had an early Halloween scare with my 82 year-old mother-in-law this morning. She’s a widow, she lives nearby and she works for my husband opening the mail and filing things a few days a week. At 82, she is in good health, mentally and physically, and she likes to work and get out of the house every couple of days and keep busy. I should add that she also babysits, she’s a good cook, and she is very kind to me, her daughter-in-law.
Each morning at 8:00 a.m., my mother-in-law is outside waiting for my husband to pick her up and drive her to work. Today, it was raining and she wasn’t outside. My husband went to her door and used his keys to get in. She had the inside latch on the door, however, so he couldn’t gain entry. He knocked on the front door. No answer. Next, he called her from his cell phone. He could hear the phone ringing inside. Again, no answer. He continued knocking and calling for several minutes.
My husband called me. “Can you come over here? I think something has happened to my mom. I just called the police to come and get her door open for me.” He was trying to be brave, but he sounded scared. Since my mother-in-law is 82, we do worry about her health, but have been fortunate so far that she remains independent and without too many serious health issues. I threw on some clothes, jumped in the car, and sped all the way to my mother-in-law’s house, all kinds of morbid scenarios filling my head.
When I got there, I tried to be re-assuring, telling my husband (unconvincingly) that maybe she was just asleep inside. Still, this is not at all like her. She’s a very punctual person. When the police came, they too pounded on the door, shouted her name, and called her phone, all to no avail. At this point, my husband and I were both in tears, assuming my mother-in-law had died of a sudden stroke or heart attack and was lying on the floor of her apartment, all alone.
Suddenly, after what seems like forever, but has actually been about 30 minutes, she opens the door to find her crying son and daughter-in-law and a curious audience of policemen, firemen, and neighbors.
“What?!” she exclaims. “What’s going on?”
Turns out her power had gone off in the night, so her alarm clock didn’t wake her. She had removed her hearing aids at bedtime, and so, sleeping soundly under the gentle pounding of raindrops on the roof, had not heard the telephone or the door.
I wanted to be mad that she gave us such a fright, but truthfully, I’ve never been so happy to see my mother-in-law in all my life! We were all quite embarrassed at the fiasco we caused, but we are so very grateful that we still have her with us. She got dressed and off she went to work with my very relieved husband.
I am home now. My heart is pounding. I simply must calm down. I think I’ll have some tea and chocolate. Then it’s off to the hospital to visit my dad until Tom and Huck get out of school. Such is the life of an adult daughter who still very much wants her parents and mother-in-law in her life.
Once again, I am also thankful that I am selling books and not teaching school. I could never have had the flexibility in my daily schedule to deal with these crises when I was teaching full-time. While I hate to miss even a single day of working with my books, bookselling is something I can put aside when necessary. The only boss I answer to is myself and my bottom line, and I like that. I am thankful to be a bookseller.
That book scouting post keeps getting delayed, but I promise to get to it soon. Sorry to make you wait.
