A Tornado and The Debris

It is funny how something can come along like a whirlwind and completely alter your plans or your life or your future.

This happens in an instant and then you are left either cleaning up the debris or celebrating the clearing out of what you don't need, all depending on the perspective.

A tornado of sorts hit my house and I'm deciding on cleaning out the debris.

Back up a week ago to my glorious trip to Delaware. I had so much fun and it was well deserved after I spent the prior week cleaning the house and doing laundry so the hubby and kids wouldn't have to.

I came home to a mini tornado of my son forgetting to study and my hubby not thinking to tell him to study, despite always asking me how the kid is doing (he is a freshman). In my evaluation of those three days, I think they all just decided to play since mommy was gone, now the kid is paying a price for that was the the last weekend before the last week of class and finals.

Now here we are, finals week, and the kid is scrambling to complete his drama assignments. Cleaning out the debris on this one? I told him I will not pay $500 for him to attend summer theatre and he did not think it important enough to turn his his play assignments on time.

Then the weekend came and it was fun on Saturday at the African Arts Festival. Fun until that turned into the wee hours of Sunday and the hubby woke me up at 4:15am complaining of nausea. I thought it was because he ate spaghetti at 9 o'clock at night!

We finally go to the emergency room around 6am and by then he was complaining of shooting pain up his leg. No fever, chills, none of the raging H1N1 flu symptoms, none of that. Several tests and hours and hours and hours and hours later, they said they were going to admit him to the hospital. He was getting sicker in the emergency room. No Memorial Day parade or BBQ for us.

The week has been crazy between runs to the hospital and the endless tests and the unknown of what made him sick. The kid trying to study for finals, me trying to get my syllabus in and my program hires completed before June 1st. A tornado!

In the midst of this storm, we have been blessed with phone calls, emails, prayers, thoughts sent, meals brought over, flowers delivered to his room, offer to watch the girls. Real love, the kind perfect strangers will show you when a tornado hits your home. The help to clean out the debris and remove the broken pieces.

It is Friday and the hubby says the doctors will let him come home today. It is the last final for the freshman son. It is the school picnic for the first-grade daughter.

And tomorrow will be Saturday. A workshop for my new hires, graduation for the high school, play time for the girls. And it will be the day the sun shines and on Monday, the trash truck will come by and pick up all the debris of the week. The old papers will go away, the winter clothes packed away or donated, the summer things brought out, the broken pieces in the trash,and perhaps, somewhere in there, the hubby will mend and take better care of himself.