Busy Family Gatherings

This week, I had a lovely visit with my parents.
So I haven't blogged all week and I'm way behind on my grading.
Still, it's nice to take a break. To just be in the moment. To laugh and remember. To take some walks. To talk about making jam, but then decide not to.

This is a good picture of us, even though my eyes are closed!

We thought they might not be able to make the trip up from Florida, which is about 1000 miles away, when Dad went into the hospital the week before. He'd been sick and Mom and the doctors thought it was from being on antibiotics which upset his digestive system. They went to the ER, he had some fluids pumped into him and he went back home.
Then that night, as he continued to be sick, he got up to go to the bathroom and nearly passed out. Mom call the ambulance and they took Dad to the hospital. He stayed for four days and in the end they realized that he had salmonella poisoning.
I know how I feel after a stomach virus, so I urged Mom to take Dad home and rest for a few days before they made the drive to Ohio. I looked up airfares and tried to convince them to fly instead.
I wasn't really surprised when I received a text from Mom that said Dad was out of the hospital, and they were driving north.
They didn't even wait a day.
Like independent teenagers, they took no advice from me.
But I was so happy to see them and spend time with them.

My brothers and me

My brother from Texas flew to Ohio so that he could be here for my mother's family reunion. She's the youngest of nine children. Five of them are still alive, with the oldest being 95.

Mom wanted all three of her children at the reunion, so we were.
Mom and Dad were here at my house on Monday when Grace flew home from Europe, so that added to the joy of the week.

Tucker made several visits to eat dinner with us while Mom and Dad were here.

Grace snuggling with her Nena.

Now, I'd better get busy grading papers. It should fill my weekend, with just one brief foray to the Columbus Art's Festival where Grace will be doing a scene with the cast of Hamlet. She plays Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. It's a stretch, but that's why she's expert at makeup.
Happy weekend to everyone.
I'm joining West Metro Mommy for this weekly meme of photos people have taken and share on their blogs.

Girl Complications

When Tucker started high school, just two years after his older brother Spencer, I worried. I had a little talk with Spencer about not dating Tucker's friends or ex-girlfriends. I didn't want it to be awkward with the older high school boy swooping down on the younger girls. Well, I didn't think to give the opposite warning, which is why we're now in an difficult girl complication at my house.
Nearly a month ago, Tucker, who just turned 16, came home and said he was going to the prom with Jordan. Jordan's a senior, 18, and the ex-girlfriend of one of Spencer's best friends. Awkward.
At first, I thought, "No big deal. It's just prom."
Then I started getting the texts, "Be home in a minute. Had to walk Jordan home." Or in response to my "Where are you text?" he might respond, "At the park with Jordan."

Tucker getting fitted for his tux.

Not that long ago, Spencer was reminiscing about his friendship with Jordan and how strange it felt to hardly know her now. She was one of those girls who started dating older boys in high school and she grew away from Spencer and his friends.
When he found out that Tucker was going to the prom with Jordan, he said he didn't blame Tucker for going to prom with her because she's "a hot senior girl."
Then he added, "I don't want Tucker bringing her here to hang out. That would be weird."
Tucker always brings his girlfriends to hang out at our house. We've got a TV and Xbox in the basement. They sit on bean bag chairs or the futon. Earl and I put in lots of loads of laundry trying to keep an eye on them.
I agreed to Spencer's conditions because I didn't want to make him uncomfortable.
Then Spencer and Earl left for a week on Spring Break. Tucker stayed home because of track practice, and he asked if he could have Jordan over. Since Spencer was gone, I said yes. And most nights, Tucker and Jordan hung out at our house for awhile.
When she came in, she'd talk about track practice or prom plans. One night she sat with me a few minutes watching Long Island Medium while Tucker cleaned up in the basement, throwing away chip bags and empty Gatorade bottles.
At first it just felt uncomfortable to have Tucker dating this older girl, but now I hear them laughing together and I feel like Tucker has been good for her. She has seemed really sad and searching whenever I saw her the past couple of years. She seems more comfortable in her own skin. So maybe dating Tucker helps her feel more confident. But I still have the Spencer issue and he did have to return from vacation eventually.
"Mom, can I have Jordan over?" Tucker asked.
"Oooh. Spencer is going to be home by 9:30 so you'd have to walk Jordan home at 9," I said, feeling like I'm in a Cary Grant movie where someone leaves by the back door as someone else is coming in the front door.
"How about 9:15?" Tucker asked. Then he stopped. "Never mind. 9 is good. I can't believe I said 9:15. That would just be so weird."
So far, I've managed for Spencer to avoid running into Jordan at our house. But if the relationship continues, I don't know how I'll continue the juggling.
And next week at prom, they're all bound to run into each other.
Yesterday, Spencer and two friends were in the kitchen eating pizza when Tucker and I left to order his tux.

Spencer and Claudia going to prom last year.

Spencer's friend Dillon asked, "Who you going to prom with Tucker?"
Of course, Hayden, Spencer's friend who used to date Jordan, was right there in the kitchen too.
"Jordan," Tucker said. And Dillon swallowed the pink lemonade in a gulp.
"Wow," Dillon said.
"Yeah, he outdid me this year," Spencer said as we walked out the door.
I'm just not cut out for this life sneaking around and trying to keep different factions separated. I thought boys would be less complicated than girls, but maybe it's the other people's daughters who make it so complicated for me.

Domino Effect

You know how one thing leads to another.
Nothing is ever simple. I'm learning that lesson all over again tonight.
Grace will be home tomorrow. (Yay!)
That means, I have to clean out her bedroom, a room that her younger brother claimed before her flight left Columbus.
In order to clean out her room, I have to move Tucker. He doesn't want to share a room with Spencer so he'll get the basement rec room futon. He has a dresser there, but no place to hang his hoodies and the button-up shirts he has started wearing.
So before I can move him, I have to figure out where to hang up his clothes.
Then it hit me. I have a coat tree in my room that holds purses, scarves, belts and my robe. I can clean that off and move it downstairs for Tucker's things.
I looked in my closet to figure out where to hang the robe and the scarves. Then I needed to clean the warm weather clothes out of my closet in order to make room for the things hanging on the coat tree, in order to move Tucker's things to the rec room, in order to begin cleaning Grace's room for her 40-day stay at home before she moves off to college and I'll reverse that order.
I have no hopes that her room will be as clean as it was here in June 2009 when I spent three days straightening it, but I know it will be a bit more organized than Grace left it when she went to France and Tucker is leaving it as he moves to the basement bedroom. I'm going to start in there by picking up the dirty socks and the wadded up tissues. Who knows if there's still a nice wood floor under all those discarded bath towels.

Seasons

My Uncle Don died this week and my mother, having just returned home to Florida, returned north for his funeral. She didn't get to see him on the last trip because he was in intensive care after a botched surgery.
My mom is the youngest of nine children. Her oldest sister Lula died when Grace was young, and her sister, Lorena, the eighth child, died about four years ago. Now her brother Don, who is the seventh child has died.
Unlike the rest of his brothers and sisters, Uncle Don did not leave his home state of Kentucky, so he always sounded more southern than the others. His voice was a high tenor. He also went bald early. I don't remember him not being bald, while the rest of his brothers still have thick heads of hair as they journey through their 80s.
When I think of Uncle Don, I remember visiting there as a child and the time he had the three-legged dog named Rainbow.
My mom and Uncle Don fought when they were children. They grew up on a farm in the hills of southern Kentucky and Uncle Don was the brother who tortured her, mostly because the others were grown and moved away. Uncle Don knew my mom was afraid of pigs, so he would hide and make pig noises to scare her. He knew it would always get a rise out of her.
The other story I remember is about Uncle Don's military service. He was in the Navy during the Korean War. I sat down with all of my uncles a few years ago and videotaped their reminisces about their military experience. Uncle Don pulled out a card the size of a drivers license. It was a mini certificate for crossing over the Prime Meridian while in the Navy. My Uncle Clarence, who fought during World War II, hurried over to his car and came back with a full-sized, wall certificate that he got for crossing the Prime Meridian. His certificate dwarfed Uncle Don's. They laughed at the way the certificates had shrunk as crossing the Prime Meridian became less of a feat.
The question I asked Uncle Don about his military service was whether the rumor was true.
"Did someone else take your swimming test for you?" I asked.
That was the story I had heard. To be in the Navy, Uncle Don was required to take a swimming test, but he wasn't able to swim, so he had someone else swim for him.
Now, just a few years later, I can't recall what his answer was. I'll have to search for the videotape to see what he said. But that's how I'll remember him, a man willing to get on an aircraft carrier and cross the Pacific Ocean while unable to swim a lick.
Uncle Don always wore a hat, not a baseball cap, but more of a tractor or trucking cap with a bill. He always spoke to me at the crowded family reunions and asked how my family was. He raised two sons who now have wives from the Phillipines, one of whom helped care for him while he was ill.
Today as she mourns his passing, my mom doesn't think about the ways he teased her as a child, but the relationship they built as adults.

"Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen --
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between" -- Emily Dickinson