weekend lookback, the 4th of july

Row 1: Nightfall, waiting on Arthur | Arthur's impact | Arthur moves out; Row 2: How I spent my 4th of Jul | medicinal | clear skies ahead | Row 3: All hands on deck | Breakfast at Wimbledon | summer on a plate

Why yes, we did spend the 4th of July at the ER, thanks for asking! Oh, Neel. really, it's nothing big to report. First let me tell you about Hurricane Arthur. Now there's the real story.

I kid.

It did slam just south of us as a Hurricane 2, but somehow the track and speed of this one made the impacts minimal, unless you count the tornado sirens going off in the middle of the night. Now that as much as Neel's hand was the big talk of our neighborhood BBQ.

"Did you hear the sirens last night?"
"Yeah! We grabbed the cat and the kid and headed straight for the laundry room. Did you?"
(Gleefully) "Slept right through them!"

I heard them. Apparently I'm in charge when it comes to weather. First my phone went off. I usually keep it downstairs at night but because of the storm, I'd brought it up to our room. Neel had to tell me, "Your phone's going off." I looked, it said tornado warning, and I laughed, saying, "This is why I brought it upstairs!" (My system worked!) Then I went back to bed.

A few minutes later, around 1:30 AM, the sirens went off, a loud, low siren rising to a deep crescendo that was accompanied by an alarming Big Brother-esque voice. "[Garbled}... Take shelter immediately." This was more concerning. The sirens come from the university a few blocks away, and if they're going off... Well, what do they know that I don't know? So I stumbled down stairs and all was quiet. Really, really still except for birds singing. At 1:30 AM?

You know what Cal said to me when I finally decided to get him and Neel up and have them come downstairs? What he says every morning when it's time to get up. "I'll be there in a minute."

All our drama came the next day. And it wasn't that dramatic, really. You may remember from Instagram pictures way back the toilet on my back deck. It's been there so long, we should have planted flowers in it. Or gotten a fish. Really, Neel's just been waiting for room in the trash bin to throw it out, and that day came on Friday. While I was in the shower. I come into our bedroom to find him wrestling the thing to the ground, trying to the tank off. He gets a funny look on his face, almost like he's forgotten something and comes into the house. "I cut myself."

Knowing we'll need to staunch some blood, I look down at the fluffy white towel that I'm currently wrapped in. "Is it bad?"
"Pretty bad."
"Emergency Room bad?"
"Um... yeah." 

The porcelain had shattered as he'd tried to pull the tank off the base and it sliced his hand. Many of you have met Neel and many of you have heard the story about how I heard him laugh before I ever laid eyes on him. He's hard to rattle. He's laid back and easy going. So when he says it's bad, I believe him, but he never acts like it's bad. We clearly need something to wrap his hand, and I have the presence of mind not to use my fluffy white towel and grab some old wash cloths. (The towel goes around my sopping wet hair.) We pull on clothes, we lock up the dogs, and I call Cal who is across the street at his friends' house.

As we try to sneak out the door with Neel's hand wrapped in a towel, Cal's friends' dad (Who is Italian. And a soccer coach.) meets us in the street, his head in his hands. "NEEL! WHAT HAPPENED!"

It's really quite sweet. And loud. But more touching than anything.

But really? The whole thing was super easy and we were in and out super fast. (We were early enough to beat the drunks and the fireworks, I guess.) They worried about bone and tendon damage, but it looks like all the problems seem minimal. His blood pressure was pretty high when he got there and the nurses asked, is there a reason why it would be this high? Neel's answer? "I'm freaking out."

They were stunned. You're so happy, they told him! Yeah, that's Neel.

We sat around for the rest of the weekend. He tried to do to much, and I got irritated (I'm generally less happy, it seems.), but all in all he's healing nicely.

The toilet still sits on my back balcony. He calls it his Everest.

weekend recap, june 30

1. All Star Line Up | 2. All Star Gelato | 3. All is Calm on the Water

So I made that gelato, and it was so good it almost deserves its own post. Although it was so easy that I'm not sure what I can say? "I love gelato" over and over again? Even Neel eats it and he's not an ice cream man. Or fan. Really right now, it's all baseball all the time around here. Cal's on an All Star team, so he's had practice every day and their games started this weekend. We won one and lost one. Harumph. We'd like to win every game, of course. All hope is not lost, however. Double elimination means that this team can still make it to the state championships. Just win three more games. They can do it if they keep their heads out of their butts. (That's my sage coaching advice: Get your head out of your butt.")

Two things occurred to me while sitting at the games this weekend. The first was that I'm completely guilty of a less tragic version of Joan Didion's magical thinking. If I don't watch this at-bat, he'll get a hit. If I keep flipping through this magazine, we'll get this last out. Neel does it too, I'll have you know. He gets up and walks around. He claims his butt gets sore, but I think it's to try to shift momentum. Does it work? Of course it doesn't. But it's better than just sitting there and helplessly hoping.

There's another thing I do, and I probably do it with more than just baseball, but that's to make things about more than what they are. Being on this All Star team is more than simply playing baseball. I find myself saying to people, "This experience is so good for Cal." And when I say that, it's about more than the act of playing baseball. It's about dinner with the team, and spitting in the dugout, and coaches yelling over dropped balls, and coaches cursing in excitement. It's about fist bumps and picking yourself up after a missed play. It's about picking a teammate up after a missed play. It's about banging on the water cooler and joint effort to a common cause. It's about a teen boy being among boys and men and all that entails (from the spitting to the cursing to the fist bumping), but of course it's about all that. What is it about me that wants this experience to be all baseball and more? Can it just be baseball? Does it have to be this experience that's good for him too?

Well, I'm his mother, so I guess of course I'm always looking for the more to what's there, even if to Cal it's just a team and a game. One at a time. He plays tonight at 6:30. Wish us luck.