Impending Troubles?

How do you respond to someone's prediction of doom?
I'm not really sure what to do with this. Maybe you can help.
Just this morning, I called Sheila, asking her to review how she handled her 20-year-old son's teenage years. Tucker seems angry whenever he's home. I want things to be better, but I end up getting angry back at him. Sheila and I talked for awhile but, as usual with parenting, we didn't come up with a solution. As I dropped Tucker at school this morning, the slam of the door resounded like an exclamation mark on our relationship.
I've been worried about Spencer the past few days too, since he came home at 9 p.m. Saturday. He hasn't hung out with his friends since then. He claims everything is fine, he's just decided to stay home more. That makes me nervous. He's the most social person I know. Is he fighting with his friends? Is he trying to avoid trouble?
So worry about my boys was nibbling at my brain when I got home and checked my email. One of my former students, Muhanned,a smart man who I trust and stay in contact with, sent me an email. Muhanned was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in England and the U.S.
His email was titled "I had a dream." I figured he was sending me another video of his baby daughter. But not. He wrote about his dream that "some harm came to your son" and "you were offered $300 million in compensation." He woke up with a feeling of foreboding and wasn't able to shake the feeling for the past few days, so he emailed me.
I felt tears fill my eyes.
Should I go pull both boys out of school and keep them home -- forever -- to keep them safe?
I don't know whether Muhanned has prophetic dreams like his namesake, but the idea of something happening to either of my sons is frightening. And when I thought about it, I realized there is nothing I can do to protect them from the world.
Of course, I analyzed Muhanned's email. I wanted to shoot back questions: Which son? Have you had dreams come true before? Did something happen during the day that made you think of me, which could have spurred the dream and had nothing to do with my future?
And I looked at his carefully chosen words: "some harm." He didn't say "die" but why would I get compensation if said son was still alive? $300 million compensation meant some sort of accident and a big corporation responsible. I brooded on his words. I needed to make sure my boys were safe.
The thing is, there's nothing I can do to make sure my boys aren't involved in an accident if Muhanned's dream is correct or if it isn't. The only thing I can do is to make sure that the boys know how much I love them, to be certain our relationship is fine in case anything should ever happen to them or me -- whether it's related to Muhanned's dream or just to life.
So I asked Tucker to go to lunch, but he turned me down. He wouldn't mind if I gave him his weekly allowance though. So I dropped by the school. Tucker and his buddies filled the car and asked me to drop them at Qdoba. He leaned over and game me a kiss before he got out.
Then I saw Spencer walking with a few friends on their way to lunch on this beautiful, sun-drenched day.
Whatever the future holds, I hope we can all say we didn't waste our time together fighting or complaining.
And I'm thankful to Muhanned's dream for forcing me to go make peace with Tucker and take a few minutes out of my day to remember how much I love my kids.

Christmas Miracle

For awhile now, I've been wishing that we hadn't made Grace's reservations home so late in the month. She was feeling uncomfortable staying with the French teenagers who made her feel like an imposition.
I called the Airlines and they said the change fee was $250-$275 plus whatever the flight difference was.
I called AAA and talked to a travel agent who said she couldn't do anything to help.
Tonight though, Grace and I were both wishing we could be together, and the French teenagers emailed her to ask if she could find another place to stay next week because they have tests coming up. (You can imagine that Grace is a really noisy person who would keep them from studying.) So she messaged me in a slight panic.
I'll fix it, I messaged her.
I would have to bite the bullet and pay the high change fee.
So I called the Airlines again. I got a man with a super deep voice and told him I wanted to find out what it would cost to change my daughter's ticket. He immediately seemed sympathetic.
I asked him for a flight any time between now and Dec. 19 and the cost to change it. He searched for a minute and talked to me about his son in a private college in North Carolina.
"How about Wednesday? Your cost would be $1," he said.
"One dollar plus the $250 change fee?" I asked.
"No, ma'am. One dollar."
Wednesday doesn't work because Grace will be on a train back to Paris, but the helpful deep voiced man found the next available date and said, "That one's going to cost you $26."
"I'll take it!" I said.
And so, Grace will be home by the end of the week.
Now, I just have to figure out how to tell Tucker that he doesn't get a room of his own anymore.

Saturday Snapshot -- Swimming

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
The photographer, who took Grace's senior picture and is scheduled to take Spencer's senior picture in August, has some kids on the swim team. Lucky for me. She sent this great photo of Tucker swimming butterfly.


Butterfly has always been my favorite stroke to watch Tucker swim because the muscles in his back ripple and he looks so powerful. You can see from this picture that his arms stretch almost across the whole lane, which might hint that he will grow even taller than the 6-feet tall that he is now.
Tucker doesn't like the picture because his mouth is to the side, but that's just how he breathes when he swims butterfly.

Clue

The problem with starting a mystery is that eventually the answer must be revealed and this time, it isn't very exciting.
Remember when I tore my ACL by rollerblading? The story was improved by the fact that I was training for the marathon and had just finished my 17-mile training run when disaster struck! Duh, duh, duh, duh!(That's the exciting music)
Lately, my family has been beset by ho hum injuries. Grace sprained her ankle this fall but never knew for sure how she did it. Maybe overuse of flipflops as she sprinted across campus.
This time, the crutches and the aircast belong to:

Tucker
The rather blase story is that he stepped off a curb onto uneven ground and rolled his ankle. He called me and said he thought he'd broken it.
When I arrived, two adult women were there applying ice. He was pale and sweaty. I suspected he wanted to avoid the swim meet the next day, but like the good mother I pretend to be, I didn't say that.
I didn't rush him to the emergency room because I have made that mistake before. He broke this ankle when he was seven. He has injured it a couple more times. I think the sweating and the paleness come partially from that memory of the broken one.
The urgent care at Children's Hospital took an xray and determined that it was a sprain. No weight on it for 7 to 10 days. No swimming.
More ice cream, please, for Tucker who is forced to loll on the couch for a week.

Crutches and Ankles

What is it with my kids and ankles?

How about crutches? Do they have some sort of magnetic attraction to aluminum crutches?
We have two sets of crutches in the basement and neither pair fits me. They're all for tall people.
Any guesses on who's using them and how these crutches and the aircast came to be in my living room?
I guarantee you that whatever your guess is will be more entertaining than the actual story.

What Life Could Have Been

Disclaimer: This is a post I didn't want to write, but like a broken down car in the fast lane, it seems to be blocking my forward progress. So, here it is, more than 30 years after, my attempt to understand.
This week was my sister's birthday. I usually call my parents and we talk around the birthday, not usually about it. My sister, Tammy, four years older than me, died when she was 18 at the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Cincinnati on May 28, 1977 -- the night before her high school graduation.
Growing up, we were like normal sisters. We shared a bed until I was about in the fifth grade. I remember playing dress up and tea party and tying up our little brother. I remember lying in bed and talking after the lights were out. I remember the time she asked if I would "freak out" if her boyfriend tapped on the window one night. Yes! I told her.
She seems to have been incredibly stable. Good grades, steady boyfriend, in the chorus of the high school musical The Sound of Music. She was pale and thin, probably not even 100 pounds. She had big brown eyes and a tiny mole that looked like a beauty spot on her face. She liked to curl up on the couch and read, which I loved to do too, but I picture her calm while I was whooping about the neighborhood loud and rowdy. If we played Little Women, I was always Jo and she was Meg.
Her life was going places I couldn't begin to imagine. Her high school graduation was the next day. My mom had cleaned the house and gathered food. Relatives were coming, even my grandmother from Kentucky.
That Saturday night I had a Rainbow Girls event. I don't remember where we traveled to -- Blanchester or one of those far outposts. I do remember that Tammy's friend Jane drove me home. We went through a neighborhood in my small town that I couldn't find again, but Jane pointed out a spooky window where someone is said to watch for someone who never returned.
My parents were in the remodeled basement playing cards with another couple. I could hear their laughter carry up through the floor. I turned on the television and plopped onto the couch.
The Carol Burnett show was on. Was it the end of the show or did they interrupt it with news of the fire? I'm not sure now. Did I yell downstairs to my parents or did they come running up because they heard something on the radio? I can't recall. But I remember that we huddled in front of the television watching the place where my sister and her "fiance" Brent had gone to celebrate -- his new job, her graduation. I don't remember when my brothers came home, Craig, two years older than me, Kevin, two years younger.
I tried to stay awake waiting for news. We saw survivors and searched the crowds hoping to see Tammy and Brent. About 2 a.m. I went to bed, my single bed in the small room that I had moved into after we remodeled the basement. I cried and cried.
When I woke the next morning, I remember my mom hugging me and with eyes red and swollen she said they had found her. Hope soared before she continued that my dad had gone down to identify her body.
"They wouldn't let me hold her," I remember my dad crying when he returned. "They wouldn't let me hold my little girl." He seemed frail, this dad who had always been strong.

Photo from PBS.org
Her friends filtered through the house for confirmation. Graduation continued with a red rose on her chair. Relatives filled the house and ate the food that was prepared for a celebration.
I selfishly wanted things to return to normal. I wanted to finish all of this so we could be normal again. I didn't understand that normal was gone.
160 people died in that fire. My sister was just one of them. Her picture and her story filled the papers. People called and brought food. Relatives stifled laughs as they reminded themselves of the reason they were all together.
My cousin Kim came to stay. The two of us slept in Tammy's room. One morning, I don't remember how long after, a day, two days, we were lying in bed and the sun was filtering through the curtains. Kim and I talked and we giggled some. My mom stuck her head in the door and smiled, "What are you girls laughing about?" Maybe it was nice for her to stand outside the door and hear girl laughter, to imagine that life might go on. I felt guilty about being happy even for that minute.
I don't remember moping or crying as we passed Sunday and Memorial Day. Some friends who owned a dress shop opened the shop on Memorial Day so I could find something to wear to the funeral. As a 14-year-old tomboy, I owned no dresses. And the stores were closed on Memorial Day -- too weird to think about now.
We held the visitation and funeral at our church. I was okay through the visitation until it was time to leave. We couldn't just close the casket and leave Tammy there all alone. The idea was horrifying. I started to sob and didn't know if I would ever stop. I turned to my parents who were making their way methodically around the church checking the cards on all of the flower arrangements. They couldn't deal with my crying right then. They were too numb themselves.
I ended up sobbing into the chest of the minister, a tall man with a tailored suit that I covered with tears and snot. I couldn't stand the idea of leaving my sister there alone in the church. Maybe the fact that she had died was just hitting me.
The funeral was a blur. My cousin Kim sat with me. My brother's girlfriend squeezed into the pew next to us. We were crowded together in that pew like an overloaded life boat.
I don't remember the burial. I'm sure that I had to block it out because alone in the church was too much, alone in the ground would be unbearable.
After that, life was supposed to return to normal. I missed a few more days of school and was voted into student council -- sympathy vote.
We started the summer and I began a life of how everything would have been different if Tammy had been there. I busted through high school in three years and moved on to college, the one where Tammy had originally planned to go. Each step of my life, I wondered what she would have advised. College, boyfriends, career.
The magnitude of the loss came when I held my baby girl in my arms and thought "I have no idea how to be a mother. If Tammy were here, she'd be beside me offering helpful tips. She'd know how to do all of this."
But she wasn't there when I was married or had my three kids. She wasn't there for the fights or the falling in love. She's not here now as I watch my own daughter approach high school graduation.
Maybe because I now have an oldest daughter at the same place my sister was, maybe I'm standing in my mom's shoes and I can't imagine the devastation. Or maybe I just need to look at the life I've lived and realize that a gaping hole was torn in it that day in May 1977. It's a hole that I can never patch over as much as I try to stretch the material to reach the other side.