Main Squeeze

Tonight, as I was balancing on the thin blade of a real estate knife (oh the drama), I began to get texts about my Mama. My sister had taken her to the urgent care with many strange symptoms, scary things. Crazy technology enables us to type one struggle while we're talking another, while the dog keeps putting her cold nose on my hand, reminding me of her important matters. I step outside with her, the cold night air filling my petered-out lungs. Amazing how you forget to breathe, when the crush of life looms close. I glance at the crystalline sky, its diamond-crusted stars ignorant of the six short decades I've been making dents in the dirt. Before you know it, I will be soil myself and all my little crises will be obliterated like so much fairy dust. 

One of my granddaughters had asked me, several days ago, if I would take her to her piano lesson today. Her Mama said it seemed too much to ask, just for a 30-minute lesson where we wouldn't even be together for long. But it's not the event. It's the ride. I don't think I said ten words in that first part of the day...there wasn't room for that, when an 8-year-old's windows are open. I had that 30-minute slot, when the lesson was taking place, to race up the road to a hill where I could get cell service. I had four important calls to make before I had to get back. Thirty emotional minutes later, I gunned it back to collect the girl. During that mad dash, I cried out to God "I can't do this! Please give me time to look in this girl's eyes and be able to actually be here today." Everybody and his brother were pulling on me with the tyranny of the urgent. The accursed phone lost service, praise God. We meandered to the library, then to the produce stand, then back to her home. Her siblings were jumping about, the four-year-old set of twins and the new baby. His downy eyelashes curled over rich blue eyes, alert and smiling. His Mama handed him to me, all bundled in somebody's fleecy coat. She put his quirky hat on. He stared at me for what seemed like ages and then his sweet eyelids fluttered shut. I kept thinking about what I needed to be doing, then I realized I was doing what I needed to be doing. Warm, sugar baby love, talking with my daughter-in-love, watching the dance of a mini ballerina and the whirling dervish of a mini man. The phone can wait. Babies can't. 

Mama is at the hospital tonight, late, my two siblings and I texting back and forth. Melanie took her there, ever faithful. Jerry picked up her dog and her meds, ever watchful. I sat crying alone in my kitchen. I laughingly say that the Lord left my Mama with a trinity of people, after Daddy died...Jerry's her spiritual overseer, as her pastor and son, so that's kinda like the Father part. Melanie's quick to take care of her physical needs, so that's kind of like the Jesus (Son) part. I'm the one who talks to her all the time, so that's kind of like the Holy Spirit (comforter) part. Except we're all flawed and sinful and all that, so I'm hoping I'm not being disrespectful. When the night waned and it was time to go to bed, the love texts started flying. We're siblings. We occasionally disagree or grumble or even fight. But in those squeezed moments of clarity, you wonder will she make it, when the murky parts of life fall away. When you regret the mean things you've thought or said, when petty differences suddenly seem silly...what comes out is that we love each other, in that dark night. I pray that morning finds Mama okay, that the sun shines again, that I learn to let go and let God (well, as if I had that much power. Let God, really?!) Life is short. Squeeze all the goody out of it.