Tuesday Morning

Monday began with a text that Day was in the ER with intermittent pain in her lower back.  After spending the morning with the phone attached to my ear, I finally got the good news that she's fine.  She had a CT scan and was pronounced healthy, just some kind of muscular fluke. So our Thanksgiving visit was going to happen as planned--for about ten minutes.

Then Tom tested positive for COVID--two weeks after Day's bout with it.  Day's case was hard--"the sickest I've ever been," but we're hoping Tom's will be way lighter.  So far, he's just sneezing, but he had to test before his planned flight to Berlin for work. The Texas-Virginia Thanksgiving is now iffy again at best.  We won't know until he tests on Thursday.

Everything I used to do in one or two days now takes a week, so this week has been focused on getting ready for the rare Thanksgiving visit with my kids, Day and Tom, Will and Veronica, and four grandchildren, Jackson no longer officially a child,  all in one place for a few days.  I've been moving myself to the casita so the four Learys can sleep in the house, buying groceries I never buy (Big Red and ice cream for the boys--do they even like these treats at their ages of 18 and 21, I wonder?), and planning outings and innings.  

So now we are on pause. 

I woke up at three and decided to return to Season Five of The Crown.  It's the best season of all, this year of the Queen's death, in part because it's cumulative of former seasons.  Margaret and Peter Townsend see each other after 35 years; each of her children has a marital crisis; there is a terrible fire.  Watching it, we know now when the queen will die; when Diana and Phillip will die; and that the words to the tune, "God save the Queen" are now "God save the King."

I've just pressed pause after a poignant conversation between Elizabeth and her sister Margaret.  

Margaret has just proposed they get away together and drink and talk, but her sister has too many official duties as usual. Beside the bedside of "Lillibet" is a basket with her Corgis, Brandy and Sherry; Margaret is spending the night alone with her dog, Rum.  

It's a rare scene in the years we've watched these sisters struggling with the demands of royalty and personal sacrifices.  The scene closes with their telling each other (possibly the only time in the entire series), "I love you.  I love you very much."