home

I’m home, back with my much-missed little family, and happy to report that my mom is fine. She had a couple of very scary days, but she should go home today.

I left Saturday afternoon, having procured what was probably the last ticket on that plane, knowing that my mom was in surgery at that moment. It’s funny what the brain does under stress – of course I was terrified that they’d have to open my mom up to find and repair the leak, a risky surgery, but that stress manifested itself into my being terrified to fly for the first time ever. I had sweaty knuckles the whole time, and almost threw up during the descent.

When I finally got in to JFK, I called my Dad, who gave me the news that my mom was in a lot of pain, but fine, and that they were able to do the surgery arthroscopically. I, who had felt nothing but numb and task-oriented since knowing my mom’s health was really at risk, fell apart in the middle of a stream of people rushing about the airport. I went and sat down in a haze of blurry tears, and a nice German woman put her arm around me. I told her I was crying because I was just relieved, and she smiled, crying a little too. She understood, her husband survived a triple bypass last year. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, calmer, and behind me was a brassy cleavaged Long Island mom yelling at her kids to “wash yuh hayunds guys! I mean it! There are geyums from awal ovah the woyald heyah! Theyah could be geyams from gawdamm Bankok, India in heyah!”  Welcome to New York, the possibly most, umm, unselfconscious place I've ever been.

Thanks for the supportive comments and e-mails.

Comments

[Jen]

Glad to hear that Mom is recovering!

[Ally]

Wonderful. Glad your mom is recovering.