Once a mom...

Well, I just read a family post about surgery. Rather like putting on a blindfold and groping about trying to describe the elephant...different perspective and all that. While I never allowed the idea of non-recovery (aka: death) to take hold in my musings over the impending hospital visit I'll admit the wishful thought that it was all over with, and imagining my little-grown-girl sitting on her bed in a pretty gown, the sun shining through the window onto her Anne of Green Gables book open on her lap.

While I envied the other grandparents their Henry duty, I never would have given up my assigned post: retrieval and recuperation. I wonder if any of my girls would relish the picture of themselves that pops into my head whenever I'm nursing them during a bout of flu or after a procedure, such as yesterday's surgery? Superimposed on the reality of new homes, different hairstyles and altered marital status, the long-ago images of holding back precious, sweaty locks during nausea, chipping ice to sooth a raw throat and warming a cup of toddy to just-hot, not steamy are the illustrations that guide my hand as I now pass a cold compress or massage an aching back. At least one of the girls is my height superior, but I will admit to a sneaking satisfaction when she is again reliant upon my medical ministrations and long-distance advice and sympathy. Not an iota of the soft feelings is due to wishing any illness on these former cherubs--quite the contrary. I do remember, however, in the time of their respective childhoods a "settling in" air that took over the sickroom and the general household if one of them was ailing or "under the weather." I attribute some of this to the inevitabilty that mom and dad would undertake any inconvenience, forego any activity and summon any specialist in the campaign to end the suffering or malady that forced one of our children to the sickbed.

So be assured that, on any risky life journey, for an hour, a week or a year, there is someone hovering on the edge of your life who looks past the immediate danger to the happier horizon and will always and willingly be there to take your fevered hand as you climb back from a temporary setback or illness.