The Next Thing

I breathed deeply as I looked through the diamond pane window at the washed sky, fresh after last night's storm. The houses across the street showed charmingly through the branches of the big tree down by the sidewalk, and neatly tucked by its trunk were the blue bins ready for this morning's pickup: two recycling bins, and a sturdy square trash can, lid hanging open to accommodate the living room rug folded so that it mostly fit inside.

The rug was the final casualty and culmination of a stomach bug that swept through and threatened to disrail this weekend's Confirmation. When I called up our DRE Saturday morning, after the Confirmand spent all night throwing up, she said ruefully that there were three options: find another parish having Confirmation later, wait until next year, or muscle it out. We muscled it out, the correct option as Miss Confirmand was on the way up. But her brother spent all evening throwing up, and subject to diarrhea. As he slept it off, another brother succumbed, more violently than the other two, and lightheaded to boot. But even he began to recover, finally fortified with a sleeve of crackers, and 7-Up, and Gatorade, and was well enough to come down to the living room, where he sat watching Wild Kratts with the subtitles on, as the sound remote wasn't working and no one felt compelled to walk over to the speaker and turn it physically, like we had to do back in my day. And then he sat up and vomited explosively all over the living room rug, and the afghan, and a library book, and his sister's shoes. The afghan could be washed, and the shoes, at the outskirts of the blast zone, wiped down, but the library book will have to be paid for, and the rug -- well, I'd been thinking about replacing it anyway.

There was no warning, and hence no saving the library book, but my reflexes were slow anyway because I'd been awake all night, listening to the child on the air mattress in my bedroom for the first sounds of retching. We'd run three loads of bedding already, and the last was the worst, since the boy had sneaked a portion of mac and cheese from his cousin's first communion party in Cincinnati and had eaten it in the car on the way home. We'd arrived home at midnight, and by 1:30 Darwin was in the back yard, shaking the chunks out of the comforter and sheets while I scrubbed the groggy, weeping boy. I was determined not to miss the next bout, especially as the child was now on the air mattress, and so I turned on the lamp and read Georgette Heyer all night, pausing at intervals to hold the bowl for the heaving lad. This was a three book illness, spanning Cotillion (quite good) and The Unknown Ajax (highly recommended, one of her finest), and The Grand Sophy (an enjoyable lark), though the last was a recovery read throughout Monday as I slogged through my day in pajamas and ran laundry. 

Monday had been slated for preparations. We're going on vacation this weekend! to a lakehouse! a block from Lake Erie! The eldest Miss Darwin is coming home from college on Wednesday, which also happens to be her 21st birthday. Then Thursday it's off to the lake with the whole family plus the boyfriend of the second Miss Darwin, a fine fellow who is living and working in town for the summer. Living, I say, in our attic in a bachelor pad with the eldest Mr. Darwin, a strapping lad of 14. These living arrangements were all settled out shortly before the Confirmation, but they weren't the only moving-in we were assisting. Darwin's mother and brother have just moved a block away from us, relocating from Los Angeles, and so the last month has been prep work on their new house, and getting settled, and waiting for the moving truck to arrive, and introducing to town and such. They arrived in town a week and a half after our final performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, just as we'd finished sorting the costumes and moving all the tech equipment up to storage in the attic. 

All of which is to explain why there hasn't been much posting here lately. Life seems to keep happening, one thing after another, all good things (except vomit maybe, but that's not evil, just chaotic). Stillwater, by the way, is out with a proofreader, and we hope to make strides on that front over the summer. And I've just learned that our parish is changing up the way it does Confirmation prep, making it a two-year program, which means that next year I won't be needed to run 7th-grade Bible Study. Every year I pray, "Lord, give me a sign that I can stop teaching," and here we are! I'll only have two children in religious education, and they'll be in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which has other volunteers. And no one is making sacraments next year! 

Darwin and I have promised ourselves to do more writing than is physically possible over our three days at the lake. What will really happen is that we'll read our books some, and walk by the lake some, and spend lots of time chatting with the kids. As soon as we get back, it's auditions for the summer musical (Fiddler on the Roof, July 14-16, be there or be square). After that, perhaps, it will be time to breathe -- until the next thing.