The Illness That Scared The Whole World

 Do you remember the exact moment you thought this Cororna virus is unlike any illness you’d seen in your life time? Oh yes, there's been Sars, or Ebola, and as frightening as they sounded to me, I wasn’t holded up in my home, scared to be exposed to my own kids! For me it was when they started talking about letting school out! I thought this is serious, we about to learn how unpredictable this life journey is and how fast it can flip! 

Time with our loved ones isn’t just a given. When school did let out that put Shelbey at home with her boys so that was a relief for me, because I had picked up a cough that Kerry had first and it was one of those hackers where you think you may cough up a lung before you are done! Every day for a six weeks we coughed and coughed with little sleep! No fever just hacking.  Sydney was still working and I really worried about her touching maybe 30 peoples hair and beards etc. every day and then coming home to get Easton and maybe exposing him and us. Her bosses were so good though that they held a zoom meeting right away and ask all the staff if they were comfortable working. Syd said she cried and said she was so worried about dragging something to us with Easton coming back and forth so she cut way down and her bosses were ok with everyone doing whats right for their own family. Then later that month they decided to close before it was ever decided they had to because they care about the employees. They said we say we are a family and we are going to act like a family. Melissa and Brendon got grounded to their houses too, so with all that said and all our family safe I should have hit the deck running with all the projects I have to do, papers to sort, Shutterfly books to make, garage to clean, pantry to clean …you name  it, I have it to do.  Did I?  NO! Only Brendon and Melissa did that - just hit the ground running and put up a chicken coup, painted their pantry etc.  I, on the other hand,  sat around for days (30 to be exact) like I’d been shocked with a stun gun! I was still coughing, yeah… thats my excuse. Then I got antibiotics and took some steroids and got better but the numbness and disarray in my life continued. I missed the kids like crazy for one thing, the stories of people gasping through masks on facebook where causing me to panic and be sad, beloved entertainers getting and dying from it, more stories of people having to go in the hospital, ALONE TO  and die alone with no family was really dragging my mind through the darkness. I cant think of anything worse. We always have a running anxiety level in our family and Sydney said at one point, “I just want my old anxiety back”! I thought… me too! 

As I write this I ask myself… why am I writing about it? It hasn’t affected me it like it affected all those who lost family members? I wasn’t holding up a sign to my family on the other side of the glass? What am I complaining about? Too much netflix? To much cooking? Too much sleeping in?  It’s a lil like writing about 911 when you lived in Phoenix at the time. Like how dare I really, but yet I feel like I need to get out what I’m feeling about it!

So how is this going to change us? How are we going to come out of this? Are we going to hustle to the store the first day we can….not me, I’m a chicken with compromised lungs. I won’t be. 

Maybe when we get to the other side of this we will realize we are stronger than we ever thought we could be. 

Maybe we’ll wake up every day with a prayer of gratitude, I mean before our feet hit the floor a lil thank you to God for surviving this pandemic, and thankful for this day with our family.

Maybe we’ll be thankful for our work, even though it’s all too much sometimes gives us a way to take care of ourselves and our families and see our children in school, our clients that we miss and our co workers.    

Maybe our priorities with become more focused, more clear about what if it were all over tomorrow is really important enough to spend your days doing and the reasons for it. 

Maybe precious is a new word we will use often. Our faith in God is precious, our kids are precious, our parents are precious our extended family  is precious. Our unpredictable life is precious. 

Today is Good Friday, Jesus died on the cross for us only to raise again on Sunday, We too will raise again! Trust God. 

The Famous Family Boat Story

     

You know that feeling when your intuition knows better, but you do it anyway? When Kerry and I were young parents we hardly ever went anywhere without our kids. Once in a while Mom would keep our kids and Kerry’s Mom would keep Lori and Kelly’s kids,  so we could go somewhere, which would be the case this long awaited camping weekend. We had an old school bus that was fixed up into a camper and Kelly and Lori had a pop up tent camper. To make it a really special weekend, I asked Uncle Lawrence if we could borrow his boat to go fishing and surprised Kerry with an exuberant “guess what, I found us a boat for this weekend”!  My next sentence was, “YOU DO KNOW HOW TO RUN A BOAT DON’T YOU”? Offended I even asked, he scoffed and retorted, “what’s to running a boat there’s two ******** levers”! OK, good I thought, he knows how to run a boat! I don’t swim, don’t like water, know nothing about boating, but DO love to fish!  Still though, I didn’t know if I really believed him, but between him and Kelly I decided they must. 

So we drove all the way to Lake Sacagawea, found a camping spot, launched the boat in the water, and got ready to hit the high seas! Lori was pregnant with Brook. She and I were stuffed in our life jackets, all padded up like a couple of blimps as we climbed in. Cormorants were circling around the water and I made a joke that buzzards were already waiting for us!  I still had this leery feeling about Kerry running the boat, but didn’t dare say that. All four of us are in the boat now, Kerry at the wheel.  Kerry turned the key and but it doesn’t start. I looked at Lori like great, here we sit bobbing in the water like stuffed sausages. An old timer with a beer in his hand, hollers from shore, “YOU GOT THE BATTERY HOOKED UP?” Kerry relays to Kelly, “is the battery hooked up?” Kelly climbs to the back of the boat and hooks up the battery. Kerry turned the key again. Urr urr urr…still not starting. The old timer from shore yells, “YOU GOT THE GAS LINE TURNED ON??!!” Kerry again relays to Kelly, “is our gas turned on?” Kelly, already in the back, checks,  and nope... so he turns the gas on! Finally it starts! By then, I’m really convinced Kerry does not know what he’s doing, but scared or not, we are going to catch a fish in that boat! We slowly turned around in the boat and faced the water, Kerry in the drivers seat, and the rest of us fatties in back. Kerry put it in gear, and it was purring like a kitten... but a tiny weak kitten.  All you could see was sky, cuz the boat just didn’t seem to have the power to get us level on the water.

Finally the nose or bow or whatever you call the front of the boat, comes down, and we are barely puttering out to sea. The waves are choppy and rough, and Kerry is going against them. Banging up and down in the boat, Lori looks at me signaling that she doesn’t know about this rough ride, being pregnant and all. And I was literally praying to myself by now that we get back in, as the shore looked further and further away. After we get out there a long ways, all of a sudden we are stopped. Mud is churning in the propeller. We are STUCK in the middle of the river! Kerry yells, “GOD*****, we are stuck on a sand bar, You guys come up front”.  So we waddle like obedient penquins to the front, pregnant, fat and stuffed in a life jackets. He tells Kelly to get on the nose of the boat to lighten the weight in the back,  and he pushes us off the sand bar with an oar!

Now I’m mad! I crabbed at Kerry, “I KNEW YOU DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO RUN THIS THING!” “ TAKE US GIRLS BACK TO SHORE UNTIL YOU FIGURE IT OUT! So we putt, putt,  putted back, with Kerry complaining about how they could possibly water ski with this thing. Once back, Lori and I got out, and started stomping up to the bus, ready to park our butts safely in our camp chairs in the shade of the bus until and if, they figure it out. The old guy that was yelling out how to start the boat earlier, met us half way. He said, "what is going on"? I said to him, “there’s something wrong with the boat he can’t get any speed out of it”. He says and I quote, “WHATS WRONG WITH IT, IS THE DUMB SONOFABITCH THATS TRYING TO RUN IT!” He's on a mission now to show those twenty something year olds how run a boat! Beer in hand, he strides down to the boat and climbs in with Kerry and Kelly. In what seemed like one seamless step he takes over the drivers seat and they roar backwards so fast, they take in water in the boat! He spins the boat around and they roar out into the horizon, Kerry and Kelly's plaid flannel shirts disappearing in the distance.

 Pretty soon they appear again,  just skimming and skipping along the lake at high speed. Gloating about how I knew all along Kerry didn't know anything about a boat, I am happy to be safely back in my chair, and Lori is assessing if everything is alright with her pregnancy.  We didn’t know if we should laugh, or be worried for the guys with this drunk "older skipper", lets just call him, in the drivers seat! Kelly later told about the guy saying to him as they are cruising along, “pull the plug” (in the bottom of the boat to get rid of the water that came in), and he didn’t know if he should do it or not but… he did, and the water got sucked right back into the lake! That old guy  definitely knew what he was doing! 

They came back after about thirty minutes and the guys came up to the bus loaded with some laughs, and still on an adrenaline high from that crazy ride!  Kerry was explaining about some levers that had four speeds or something that he’d never seen. They were cackling now, about the guy telling Kelly to "pull...the...plug" and Kelly looking at Kerry with eyes as big as saucers, silently asking should I? We had lunch and went back out later and the water was calmer and we had fun. Now that Kerry knew how to go fast, fast it was. He was trolling so fast our bottom walkers were skimming along on top of the water, so we kind of decided that boating really isn’t Kerrys long suit. 

Kerry and I eventually got our own boat but he never has had much patience with a bunch of people casting all around him and baiting hooks and keeping peoples lines out of the propeller!  And I  decided long ago I would rather wade out in the water put my chair down, feet in the water and peacefully fish from shore, than listen to him be crabby and complain about the cost of the gas.  The boat story has been told and retold over the years at Kerry’s expense in our family, and it was funnier in hindsight than at the time thats for sure!