It's lookin' up!

So, first - Ida is quite a lot better. Lots of recovery to get through, but recover she will. We are still amazed, and so thankful for every little prayer and abstract hope family and friends have made for her.

She may be out of ICU today. The nurses had her walking around her bed, and she is sitting up. When Leah and I left at 1:30 p.m., she was getting ready to tuck into her first meal(ish) since last Friday. And they're taking some of the IV lines out now, too. The nurse said her job now is to recover. No complications thus far.

On the daycare front, we're making headway and are cautiously optimistic about a few options we've found. Whatever hoping you have left to throw our way - we'd appreciate it. It's so overwhelming, to deal with this episode, and to face the prospect of leaving Leah at a daycare. I know, I know, lots of people do it and they're fine, but when you didn't have to entertain the prospect at all and are suddenly thrown into this whirlwind in the week-and-a-half before you go back to work... Well. It's difficult.

So. Chin up and all that... Things might just be turning around.

Breathing a shallow sigh of relief

We had a good day today.

Ida's breathing tube is out and she's doing well without it. David spent the afternoon with her (my dad kept him company).

She asked how Leah is - most important question first! - and joked a little bit with the nurses. She was able to tell them if she is uncomfortable, and she realizes what happened - and that it's been a close call.

We might be able to leave the ICU behind tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday.

David's step was much lighter when he came in the door this evening. We're still cautiously optimistic, but so far, things are continuing on a positive note. We've made it through another day, and tomorrow's looking good too.

Thanks so much for the kind thoughts and prayers... Every one of them has helped tremendously.

ICU

We spent the weekend in the Civic ICU. We almost lost Dave's mom yesterday.

She was feeling nauseous on Friday night, late, and was sick in the night. And then she got more sick. Ida called us around 9:30 Saturday morning, and asked David to bring her some gingerale, to settle her stomach. We thought it was food poisoning, maybe.

David arrived to chaos. She was very sick, very weak and her speech was slurring. She didn't want to go to the hospital at first, but when she told David she couldn't breathe, he called the paramedics. They whisked her to the hospital. David tried to follow, but some DB blocked his way out of the driveway after the ambulance got out onto the street, so he was a bit delayed. Moron. Would you not think that a car coming from the same house as the ambulance just pulled out of, might have somewhere more important to go than where you're heading?

He got to the ER - thankfully only about three minutes away - and no one could tell him anything. He was worried that they didn't have her name, or her information, so after a few minutes - fifteen, twenty? - he found a nurse that helped. She took the info, and then brought him to a room where the doctor would come and see him.

I was at home with Leah, with no way to get to him... Thinking he'd only be gone a few minutes, he took the car with the carseat in it. I stayed on the phone with him as long as possible, until the surgeon finally arrived. And told him that the odds of his mother making it through surgery alone were slim, very slim. And that at some point, she'd not had a heartbeat, pulse or oxygen...

She's had an aneurism that caused the aorta in the abdominal cavity to burst.

Thankfully, our neighbours are very kind and have a baby... So Juliet gave us a lift to the hospital so we could wait it out with Dave. The ICU waiting room is an interesting place... Somewhere outside of reality, sort of, but where reality is very harsh at the same time. Forced jollity, constant chatter... Anything to break up the silence, that inevitably brings the thinkings and worryings. Leah was the most fabulous distraction, and she made the afternoon so much easier.

So we waited, and we chatted, and we played, and tried to buoy Dave through the hours. We bonded with a family there for their aunt. David's cousin Stephen came and spent time with us, because he knew David would need him. And we did, so much.

Ida pulled through the surgery, shocking her surgeons. She has a tenuous hold on life at the moment - seeing someone so vital and feisty with a heart monitor that involves a catheter (sort of like an epidural catheter), multiple IV lines, blood transfusions, breathing tube... The breathing tube is the worst. But if things continue as they are now, she will recover.

They brought her out of her induced coma this morning, just for a few minutes to check her response to stimuli. The nurse, Sarah, is very kind... Ida wasn't very happy with her this morning. She responded to requests to squeeze hands, wiggle toes, and made very purposeful movement to try and get that breathing tube out (a common response to the apparatus, apparently, and positive because there is clear intention behind the movement - which means brain damage may not be a factor). Her heart and kidneys are functioning. She is fighting through this. She has Leah to fight for - there's far too much Ida needs to see her do.

Ida lost a brother to this same factor. The surgeon advised David to be screened for this, as it can be hereditary. He's so worried, always, especially since losing his Dad when David was sixteen to a massive heart attack.

The shock settled in last night. We just can't believe it. I don't know how we're all going to get through this... We're surrounded by family and friends, and have had lots of prayers from the praying types and strong hopes for recovery from others. All we are able to do is live hour by hour, and be thankful that we've made it through another half day.

The K-Word

I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm totally hooked on the Kardashians. It's horrible. They're vapid, but amusing. I can't take my eyes off the screen. Khloe is my favourite. I love her demonstration with an orange, of Lasik eye surgery. Ha!

The really terrible part is that Dave's just as bad as I am. "I'm going to bed," he says. Twenty minutes later, he mumbles, "Just. Can't. Stop. Watching."

So we're watching it on Sunday night -- Khloe and Kourtney in Miami. Kourtney has the baby at this point and she goes out on a bit of a binge with her girlfriends, drinking and partying. Tricky, because she's breastfeeding; always a sensitive topic for me, depending on how it's approached. Anyway, she has these ridiculous test strips, where you dip the strip into the breastmilk to test it for alcohol. (Really, can't you just not drink while breastfeeding? I don't drink while I'm not breastfeeding. It's not difficult. So a full twenty-four hours or so after the binge, her milk is still testing positive for alcohol. And she says, "If I have to give Mason a bottle of forumula, I'll be devastated."

Well.

I can appreciate that you would be devestated. She seems to have worked hard to make breastfeeding work, it appears to be important to her, so it wasn't necessarily a comment that I would flip out on. I save that for when I'm personally attacked in the movie theatre by a team of lactards, when they see me preparing a bottle of formula.

But Himself lost his marbles.

He was really upset that she said it - that she said it, in the first place (formula is food, not poison, people), and the tone she used... Like, she wouldn't stoop so low. (I think she always sounds like that, though.) He said that she should basically smarten up, realize that not everyone breastfeeds - by choice or by necessity - and be a little more sensitive about it, especially since she's being viewed by many, many people.

It actually was really touching. So many things we put ourselves through as mommies - the men just don't always get it, try though they may (or not, and just write us off as neurotic packages of hormones). He really gets how hard the whole breastfeeding debacle was for me. And his little episode told me that he'll always be on my side.

There. Mushiness over.

Have Yourself a Merry Little...

I think the thing I miss most about Grandpa Neil right now, besides it being The Season and how he was just the embodiment of this time of year in spirit, is how he missed out on how fashionable our gum rubbers have become. Ahead of our time in the barnyard, as it were. I can just hear the ribbing I'd get, if I'd shown up in pink ones to needle calves or something. Probably as bad as when I purposely bought ripped jeans that looked like they'd been soaked in diesel and left unwashed for fifteen months.

I remember so many Christmases... Mass on Christmas Eve after Mom had prepared our special family dinner. She made paste of mashed potatoes one year - too much enthusiasm with a hand-held blender. The Tora Bora Express, when Seamus and I hijacked her Christmas tree with his GI Joes on the Christmas train, and repelling down the tree... Took her hours to notice. After Mass, off to Ma's house for a Reveillon. House full of people - it didn't matter what had happened over the year: if you were family, you were there. And it's a big family. Santa at midnight with dollar store gifts. Almost always, a stranger passing by whose car had broken down, who was welcome into the warmth of the house. A light burning all night for that very reason, to guide them. Ragout, turkey, meat pies. Christmas cake with tiny icing flowers and those little silver balls on each one - it must have taken her hours. The decorations on the kitchen ceiling I had put up while on Grandpa's broad shoulders. My loud family all competing to talk. The singing. Laughing. Looking forward to more of the same in a week's time, for New Year's - but a little different, because the songs would change. Ripping into the gifts at about 3 a.m., and then heading home for a few hours' sleep, only to get into more gifts and candies and cookies and leftovers, and then back to Ma's before 11 a.m. for more food. Food, the food. An afternoon lost napping, drawing on uncles with markers and pens, nailing Grandpa with a rubber dart gun - right in the forehead - while he chatted with someone who had dropped in, his long legs stretched across the kitchen, hands laced behind his head...

And then a Christmas five years ago. The last Christmas with Grandpa. Quieter, not knowing what the next year would bring. Tense. Staying with him to change an ostomy bag. Hearing him apologize for being sick. Telling him he had nothing to apologize for. Lying quietly with him, while his body slowly shut down and gave into the widespread cancer that had been lurking for a long, long time.

We had a new tradition the next year: a community Christmas dinner. A few people we knew had lost family that year, not only ours... And given how full he had made our Christmases before, it was going to be an empty one. I think we just didn't want to be celebrating together, alone in that house. So we brought our Christmas dinner to the community hall in Kazabazua, and told people... Anyone who needed to eat, who needed company, was welcome. The donations were significant. We served dozens of meals, and delivered many, too. And each year since, it's gotten bigger. The donations - a lot of them anonymous - have been overwhelming. And the response has been both heartwearming and bittersweet.

Grandpa and Ma donated the original doors to that community centre. We like to think that he's still welcoming people in.

This year is different still. We have Leah... And she is spectacular.

Merry Christmas, if that's what you do. We take a mishmash of traditions and customs and have made it our own - none the less sacred for us. David, Leah and I will be with the family and large circle of friends and volunteers at the Kazabazua Community Centre tomorrow, serving a traditional Christmas feast donated by many, to those who need it for whatever reason. Drop by; the doors are open for all.

For Murray

Said good-bye, very suddenly, to the most fantastic teacher, friend and mentor I will ever know, today. Murray Orlando, you made a difference. You challenged me to always be better; to respect, but to look beyond, what and where I came from. You were a consummate ahtlete and educator. It has been a privilege.

Do you not know that all the runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize? Run so as to win. Each competitor must exercise self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.

So I do not run uncertainly or box like one who hits only air. Instead I subdue my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified.

I Corinthians 9:24-27

La mort n'est rien. Je suis seulement passé, dans la pièce à côté.

Je suis moi. Vous êtes vous. Ce que j'étais pour vous, je le suis toujours.

Donnez-moi le nom que vous m'avez toujours donné, parlez-moi comme vous l'avez toujours fait. N'employez pas un ton différent, ne prenez pas un air solennel ou triste.
Continuez à rire de ce qui nous faisait rire ensemble.

Priez, souriez, pensez à moi, priez pour moi.
Que mon nom soit prononcé à la maison comme il l'a toujours été, sans emphase d'aucune sorte, sans une trace d'ombre.

La vie signifie tout ce qu'elle a toujours été. Le fil n'est pas coupé. Pourquoi serais-je hors de vos pensées, simplement parce que je suis hors de votre vue ?
Je ne suis pas loin, juste de l'autre côté du chemin.

Lights and Candles and Saturn - Oh, my!

13 December is Lucia Day, the day to honour martyred Saint Lucy or Lucia. It falls twelve days before Christmas. It's widely celebrated in northern Europe, particularly Sweden and Finland, and for the most part survived the Reformations. Lucia's Latin root is lux, or light. Many legends surround the saint - tortured by having her eyes gouged out, she led Christians through the catacombs and lit the way by placing a wreath with candles on her head... Obviously, there are remnants of sun or light worship in it, and certain features of pagan festivals from this time of year, too!

Interestingly, it's possible that Solstice used to fall around 13 December. The Julian calendar was replaced by Pope Gregory XIII in early 1582. The Gregorian calendar dropped between eight and eleven days, depending on when it was adopted (I think!) - so something celebrated on or around 21 December under the current, Gregorian calendar, would have been celebrated around a week earlier under the old Julian calendar (date-wise). This is simply a way of counting dates - I'm not proposing that the Gregorian adjustments also changed the axial tilt of the planet! Solstice would still have been the same "day", we would just call it by another date. Make sense?

I'm not entirely sure on the mechanics, but somehow, the Julian calendar and its basis on the lunar calendar, and ignorance of the leap year concept, "lost" minutes each year, which added up to days lost over the centuries, and was problematic in fixing dates like Easter.

So, anyway, 13 December might have featured in the collective mentality in Sweden and Finland, among other areas, as the shortest day of the year. They would still be marking the date, you see, even though the *event* - the equinox - falls a week or so later. And they honour a Christian saint who seems to have significant ties to the use of light in the pagan sense at this time of year.

Obviously the Romans celebrated light at this time; they focused on Saturnus, and Saturnalia was a time for all to make merry, visit and give gifts. Saturn was the son of Uranus and Gaia (heaven and earth) - a pretty important, fearsome guy who killed his father, took his sister as his wife and was then the father of Ceres, Jupiter, Neptune, Juno and other important fellows... Although Saturn apparently ate most of them, for fear that his own children would supplant him. Long story. Basically, Jupiter escaped; he grew up, poisoned Saturn with the help of Gaia, Saturn vomitted up Jupiter's siblings... A familial war ensued, with Jupiter and his siblings v. Saturn and his siblings. Prometheus helped Jupiter et al., and together they defeated Saturn et al.; all were cast into the underworld and Saturn was either castrated or chopped up into itty, bitty pieces before his banishment (which, by the way, is how he did his own father in). I've heard another ending of the myth, that has Saturn going to Rome to rule - and a fabulous time was had by all. And at some point, he became the god of agriculture - which really does depend on the summer season and the return of the sun. All in all, it seems to be a great myth that fits in with the light v. darkness - you've got to admit, Saturn is a pretty dark figure, what with marrying his sister, eating his babies and the patricide and all - but possibly the correct way to take Saturn and Saturnalia and the light-honouring, is that his Roman rule was said to have been a real Golden Age of peace and harmony. Saturnalia is an honouring or celebration of that, and an ushering in of the growing season (and not so much his incestuous, cannibalistic and patricidal tendancies...).

Oh, and candles! Candles were a key gift given during Saturnalia celebrations. They were quite a treasure. Candlelight and fires were, as with the Yule Log, a way to bring the light. Lucia festivities feature a wreath with small tapers perched in it, worn by the oldest daughter of the house (or is it the youngest...?). The Catholic church has the advent wreath, which is similar - a wreath (eternity, evergreen, etc. - or perhaps the victory of everlasting life over darkness?) with four candles on the outer perimeter lit in the weeks leading to Christmas Day, and if I remember right, one in the middle lit on Christmas. I don't think you can get more pagan than that - no offense intended.

In Victorian times, scented candles were exchanged as gifts; and candles on the tree might have symbolized the guiding star, rather than the return of the sun and the growth that brings in the new year or new cycle. My Catholic family leaves a light burning outside on the night of 24 December - my Grandpa said it was to guide a weary traveller, but others do this to guide the Christ child. Now, we have Christmas lights, too.

Whew. From Saint Lucy, to Saturnus, to Yule Logs and candles and weary travellers... I feel like a weary traveller myself!