Gloomy in
Glendive
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I would like to tell you it is all
about the weather. I would be lying. Even though it seems like rain has
followed me from Washington to Glacier Park to Harlem to Glendive, I am simply
not that powerful.
I do not make the rain. Much as I
would like to think it is all about me, it is not. Nor is it all about the
weather. Weather is weather. Variable. Today weather is rain. This is Montana.
Tomorrow weather might bring a heat wave. Or it might snow.
This week and a half is for Family.
My older daughter and her family, to be explicit.
The players: My daughter, Dee Dee.
Her husband, Chris. Their daugher, Antoinette who is twelve. And their older
daughter, Jessica, who has two babies, Harper at three and Kyla, one and a
half.
Jessica graciously gave up her
bedroom to me. The bonus, for me, is that I get to know her baby girls.
When I arrived in Glendive, my Dee
Dee was in a tizzy over her own housing. The family has been planning to
move—in a year. Suddenly, they were given notice that the owner has other plans
that take precedence over their own plans. They have to move. So much for
plans.
Can adult children have meltdowns?
Of course. This adult mama almost melted alongside her daughter. It is allowed.
Adults have more understanding of where we are when we dissolve into a puddle
on the floor than the average two-year-old And we did not stay on the floor and
stomp our feet. Scream and cry? Well, a little.
My daughter has visions of living in
cardboard boxes under a railroad overpass. Oh, dear, I am afraid I passed that
image down to her through some weird genetic transfer. I wanted to rescue her.
I cannot.
She and Chris will find a house.
Their sense of panic will recede. They will not paste newspaper for insulation
onto the walls of an abandoned barn. Older and wiser, I know this. (That sounds
really good, doesn’t it? The older and wiser part.)
I have told her for years that they
needed to get out of that moldy old house. So, panic or no, moving is a good
thing.
Now, for the bad news. Our baby
girl, Kyla, happy and bouncy and full of love and kisses, the little flirt,
woke one morning crabby and cranky and warmish. After a round of tests, the
doctor put her in ICU. Her white cell count was dangerously high. The doctor
quickly ruled out meningitis or cancer. They are shoving antibiotics into her
veins, hydrating her, and lots of poking and pinching as well as every kind of
test. But they cannot seem to find the cause. Or they are not telling us their
suspicions. (Maybe a good thing.)
We human creatures, helpless most of
the time, seem to think if we just know what “it” is, then we can control or
fix it or make it go away. When we find out what “it” is, we usually find that
we are still helpless.
Kyla’s illness certainly puts our
small woes into perspective. It is difficult to worry over one’s paltry
concerns when a baby is suffering. Everyone pitched in to take care of Harper
while her Mom is at the hospital with the baby.
What next? I said it. Snow. Big deal.
Snow is simply weather. When September waved good-bye, she went out with an
evil cackle of witchery, piling snow over Montana. October stomped in, boots
crunching through frost, snow and a glaze of ice. This is Montana.
I’m headed home to my little casita
and what flowers the iguanas have not eaten. I would whine, but nobody would
listen.
Weepy eyes, runny nose, scratchy
throat and all, still, I sing, “But I’m on my way, won’t be back for many a
day. My heart is down, my head is turning around, I had to leave a little girl
in Glendive town.”
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
October 4,
2018
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