Everything was set for today's first drawing classes at the university.  A case packed with pads, pencils, charcoal, ink, pens, stubby things, wipey things, and the all-important little bag of pretzels had been stowed in the car last night.  Neph had a week's notice and multiple reminders to find a ride home from school since I'd be gone from right after I dropped him off in the morning until nearly dinner time.  A willing substitute had been dug up to cover for me at work.  The car tank was full so that I wouldn't have to stop either way.  The campus offering the classes is almost an hour and a half freeway drive from the town I live in and the first class starts at 9 AM.

When I woke up, I wasn't really well-rested.  Parker had a rough night shivering with chills and burning with fever and I'd been fetching him medicine and water until he fell into a noisy sleep well after one in the morning.  Six o'clock came too early for me, but I grabbed the shower before Neph could get to it and turned the water on and the magic of the shower washed the sleep from my eyes and from my brain, too.

Leave the boy home alone all day long?  And a long day it would be for him, too, sick as he was.  Of course, he's not a little tyke--he's sixteen and not fond of adult attention. 

And I'm his mother.  And even snooty teenagers feel poorly and need someone to fetch their medicine and water and agree with them that they are really very sick indeed.  Soon enough the teenagers move away from home and their mother frets when they get sick far away and she's helpless in her desire to take care of them.

So I missed those drawing classes today, missed showing up for them and missed what I hoped to get from them.  However, I think I made the right call and no one is more surprised than I am that so many years after I started this mothering thing and now having such astoundingly tall children,  I'm still on this job.

Last week it was Neph who was so sick he nearly couldn't drag himself to the loving arms of his girlfriend;

Two days ago, Parker was felled and even today an off-from-school Saturday, he's sick and clearly not malingering;

Last night the youngest in the household could barely move and he's been whisked off to the doctor already this morning.  I guess it's just natural that the youngest most urgently needs professional healing. 

Spidey is at the vet as I write this.  Mack was remonstrated to be the responsible party for the little rat who is his pet, and not the charge of the entire household, i.e. me.  Mack's resistance to assume responsibility was monumental.  His Asperger's means that he just doesn't interpret the world the way most of us do, which is hard on the rest of us as well as on him.  He fought the idea that he be the one to wheedle the appointment from the vet's clinic, that he be the one to hustle out into the cold on a Saturday morning, and that he be the one to take his checkbook and pay for the vet's services.

I held firm on all of these things.  When I was Mack's age he was the sick little critter that I was responsible for and he had some chronic problems that kept us frequent flyers at the pediatrician's office.  It's Mack's turn to be the caregiver and bill payer now.  I'll just wait for news and hope for the best for both of them.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy.

~~Osho     (1931-1990)

Spidey, daredevil wall crawler, died this afternoon after a lightning-quick respiratory infection.

He survived being a stray alone in the big dangerous world and never capitulated to the expectations of polite society after he was adopted by Mack from the animal shelter that captured the rat from a frightened family's front porch.  Spidey was just napping, but even asleep, the young rodent was an impressive specimen.

Mack took excellent care of him and Spidey taught him a lot.  For example, one night Mack left Spidey out of the cage for exercise and then fell asleep.   Spidey survived the long night by eating dozens of holes in the couch to stave off boredom.  That taught Mack really well.

 Experience is a great teacher
of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence,
its gloomy name-the-disasters-

in-advance charisma.

                                       ~William Matthews, from "Misgivings"

There certainly is a lot to be said for the things we learn through the hard work of experience which is a benefit of getting through challenges and pleasures of life.

On the other hand, not venturing to do something because you've gotten stung by something in the past or looking for new occurances of old problems will keep you shut in very small spaces.

It takes a lot to shut life down around here.  We don't fold 'em for subzero, we don't quit over snow that comes half-way to our knees.  We just suit up and get out there and push the car out of the drift and live life on schedule.

Today, however we have enough "lot" to shut every school and many businesses.  There's a foot of snow out there blasting horizontally and tiny flakes still falling vertically.  Usually young men with shovels are expected to dig us out of snowstorms, but today I'm waiting to hear back from the man with the plow.  He's a busy man, though and it might take until tonight or even tomorrow before he can catch up with calls. 

I just hope he gets to it before we run out of groceries.  Those young men have a hungry look about them this morning.

The fourth graders had settled into intensive frolicking in the snow at noon recess today when a voice distorted by the walkie-talkie informed me that Parker was on the phone in urgent need of me.  Seven dozen children, huge piles of snow, and a locked door stood between me and talking to Parker, so I asked the Voiced Person to find out what he needed. 

"He's in the health room at his school, " she reported, "He needs to come home."

That would leave the school folks two people short today, but one of the people there could do the computer stuff and as for the rest of it--well, the kids here all looked pretty healthy, so to Parker I rushed.  On the way I called his father to ask if he could stay home with the boy tomorrow while I go to the second session of the classes that I missed last week because Parker was coming down with this stubborn croupy infirmnity.  His answer was a negative.  He could not.

So, those classes that I was so excited about are not happening.  I will have missed too much to be able to step in on the third of four sessions.  I'll get my money back and I have that lovely case of papers, chalks, inks, brushes, charcoal, and pens to play with.   Since I am human, I griped a bit about being unable to commit to anything even after so many years of putting other things first.  The other parent of the "other things" only said, "I don't want to get divorced" which confused me for a minute, until I realized what he wasn't saying.  He wanted to remind me that he hadn't wanted that fourth pregnancy to continue.  He'd lobbied brutally hard for his choice, but I hadn't capitulated.  He's never changed his mind, and after a dozen years of his complaints I'd told him NEVER to refer to those nine months or the choice I didn't make or I would leave him.

I'd wanted a break tomorrow, but I would have settled for some sympathy.  Well, I guess sympathy is a waste of emotion;  it doesn't really change the situation.