Welcome to New Normal, Texas

    Tonight as I write this in one of my ‘pondering’ moods, I am sitting in a hotel room, attached to a major hospital , in a major city in Texas, close to seven hours away from home. My husband, who had surgery in late April, had to return to the hospital because of serious complications.  He has had two surgeries in the last week, and he is scheduled for a fourth surgery in two weeks. In rank order, my husband, my daughters, my friends and family, and my laptop have saved my sanity.

     I keep saying to my husband, we are OK, this is going to be OK; this for a time is our new normal.

     What does New Normal, Texas  look like?

                            First, I make my nest.

     I make it in the hospital room, the hotel room, my car, and even my purse. I sort through what I need with what little I threw in the car last Saturday, and I touch it and rearrange it and then do it again if necessary.

     I strip the hospital bed and place the sheets that need washing near the door- as if I am going to take them to my own laundry room right down the hall. I use a damp towel and mop the floor while swiping it with my feet. I wipe and stack and straighten edges and then I do it again.

                 Secondly, I honor ( as do my husband and  daughters), the worker bees , the people in the trenches that ease the fear and the pain, and I ask eye to eye tough questions of those who think they are the King Bees.

     We say thank you and excuse me , and we edify at every opportunity those worker bees whose names I will not write but whose faces are imprinted on my heart. To the King Bees, you know who you are. I am still not through with my questions, nor is our oldest daughter- which leads to-

                 Thirdly, I watch my oldest daughter be the empowered young woman, wife, mother, and attorney that she is.

     I giggled many times and thought of my mother’s knowing smile, when one of the King Bees from time to time has said, “Your daughter said…”

     You bet she said, clicking down the hospital hallway in her high heels.

     Today I watched our middle daughter, our voice of reason, our stay the course daughter, our adventurer daughter anticipate the very next thing we needed , before we knew we even needed it. She listened and stood quietly- our rock, our fixer.

     I listened to the voice of our youngest daughter , who is sick and coming down with something, say “Tell Dad I’m coming in the morning Mom.”

     I listened to my husband say to us, if we got too loud while he was resting , “Ya’ll don’t need to stop talking.”

                     Welcome to New Normal, Texas.