Wednesday

When we join the Mama Bear Club, we're in it forever, I guess, even long after our cubs are all grown up and don't need us in the ways they used to.  Sometimes things happen that throw us back to the days when we were just learning how to be mama bears.

Yesterday morning, I got a text--a text of all things!--from Day telling me she was in a Phoenix emergency room.  She's there for a conference, got a back ache, told her friends to party without her, and tried to sleep in her hotel room.

I'll keep it short: she has diverticulitis, and she's going home to Virginia later today.

Her text said lots of things; it was a nightmare night; her friends hadn't heard their phones; the story involved a walk from one hospital to the other with a blanket wrapped around her; a creepy man followed her in a car until she feigned talking to an imaginary man on the phone who was almost there to meet her; creepy man then sped off; she was taking drugs and needed to sleep; don't call right now.

I may have had an outsized Mama Bear reaction, but the first thing I did was to start washing clothes and getting ready to pack for a trip to Phoenix. But you know how it is, Mama Bears: when your babies (even long after they are babies) are "lonely and scared." you want to be there.

It throws you back to when they were actually little: sick in the hospital; having surgeries; heartbroken; scared--all the times when Mama Bear was their main person, the one they called out to from inside x-ray rooms and places you couldn't go. It took me back to the year she was in third grade, a terrible year--but that's a story for another day.

Will took us out to celebrate good report cards last night, so a day of worry turned into a night of celebratory Thai food at Kin's--way out at Dominion.  It took me over an hour to do I10 traffic at rush hour, but I made it and we had fun.

Today I pick up both kids, take one to musical arts, the other to karate, then take them home to bed until their parents get home, then drive home and put my own self to bed.