Monthly Archives: May 2009

We had the kind of afternoon today that you always wish for as a mother. Perfect, sunny weather, a blanket spread in the backyard. lunch, and three happy boys all playing, eating and laughing together. We needed that, badly.

We had one other incident last week that had me laughing in the emergency room last Thursday night at around one in the morning. The laughing? Because I honestly thought that nothing else could go wrong or be hard, that after dropping a boatload of money on Knittykid’s teeth and having to put him under general anesthesia, losing my father-in-law, having the Skeptic gone all the time either at the farm with his mom or at work, dealing with two constantly sick little ones and one very angry six year old, losing Gracie…what else could possibly go wrong? (And that list is just the big stuff. )

Little Man’s broken elbow*, that’s what. And when the doctor told me we would need to stay the night and he would most likely need to go into surgery to have pins put in his elbow in the morning, all I could do was sit there and laugh at the ridiculousness of life sometimes. That kind of tired, hurting laugh, the kind that comes up because you just can’t cry about anything anymore. So you sit there in the ER, watching Animal Planet with your son (who thinks it’s all very cool) and you just laugh, while you worry about surgery and if there is enough pumped milk stashed in the freezer for Spinner and wonder how in the heck you’ll pay for it all.

So the sun and the blanket and the lunch outside today were so good. Good in a way that reminded me we will be alright, that the sun and the warmth does come back and so do the smiles and laughter. Because when you eat soup on a blanket in your sunny backyard, watching your baby try to stand up, your three year old try to hit a baseball and your six year old make fairy food out of dandelions, all is somehow right with the world again.

*Unfortunately, it’s not a very exciting story. He was running around the backyard and he tripped on his pants and landed funny. I thought of making up some funny stories we could tell people, like he was climbing on the roof of our house and tried to sky dive into the maple tree, but realized he might actually try it so I decided not to bring it up.