Back tracking

Before I can record the last few weeks of our lives I need to do a bit of back tracking.

December 1, Jack and I boarded a plane to visit my mom in North Carolina for a week. My mom met us at the airport with Madeleines (the cookies she always brings Jack) and presents. Here is a picture of Jack all the way in the bag, wanting to make sure there were no presents left in the bag...


Each morning Jack would wake up and I'd send him down the hall to wake up grandma. I would get up sometime later to find the two of them playing happily together. I love my mom. I love how much she loves my son. I love how she spends all day engrossed in play with him. They told stories, played computer games, read books, drew with chalk, played soccer and basketball, and decorated gingerbread houses.





Grandma took us on a hay ride through the Christmas lights. Jack looks like a goon in some of these pictures. I told him to smile, and then when he didn't I told him he looked like a goon and I was going to post the pictures anyways. This is me following through, because isn't that what parents are supposed to do? Follow through on all of our shallow threats?





Grandma took us to the tree farm and let Jack pick out the tree. We put on Johnny Mathis Christmas carols, and decorated the tree together. Jack basically put all of the decorations in one clump. He was especially excited to hang the candy canes.


**Did I mention that Jack wore his Harvard shirt pretty much the entire trip? He was of course Harvard in all basketball, and soccer games played. (Some what unrelated, one morning Jack got out of bed and told he he had the best dream. Harvard beat Georgia Tech! I didn't even know he knew who Georgia Tech was!!)



One evening we went out to see a local football game that Bill was covering for the paper. I knew the game was getting serious when the man in the row in front of us stood up and put on his waterproof pants. I was sitting there, all high and mighty from California, wondering where in the world I was that people packed waterproof pants in their bags, when I looked over and saw my little boy engrossed in this football game, and it clicked. These people were out, sitting in the rain, because they were fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents to the boys on the field...and you better believe I will be bringing my waterproof pants to any and every thing I need to to support my child.

Thursday night the tornado watch for Warsaw county turned into a tornado warning. The same moment that the roof started noisily shaking my mom's cell phone rang, warning us to get into our basement or bathrooms immediately. I ran into the room Jack and I were sharing and picked him up out of bed and ran into the hall bathroom. My mom followed with all of the couch cushions in hand. We sat together in the bathroom for close to an hour. Jack woke up a few times in my arms and asked what was happening and if he could go back to bed. There are moments in life when I am no longer my own being, but just Jack's mother. I guess that's part of the survival of the species that is imprinted in each of us. This was one of them. As I sat there terrified myself, all I did was pray desperately that my child would be safe. In that moment, it was not about me, but my mind was busily thinking and planning on how I could best secure Jack's grip to the toilet (which had the best hope of remaining in place if the roof blew off.) I am happy to say that the worst of the tornado passed by us. Jack returned to bed, and my mom and I stayed up for hours eating chocolate and refreshing the radar on the computer screen until all traces of the storm had long past.



The next morning, Jack woke up and asked if we could go to the bathroom again that night because it sure was fun. His comment hit me. As terrified as my mom and I were, we somehow managed to shield Jack from it. He got to remain a kid, secure in my arms, even if my arms were surrounding him in the bathroom. Thank heaven for tender miracles.

One of the best things I got out of this trip, was how much my mom's house, of which this was only my third visit to, felt like home. It had the same feeling of home that her house always when I was a child. I love that. And I love her.