joy of nine9

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans;  Canada celebrated Thanksgiving six weeks ago.

Just this last week, I have discovered a new dynamic between parents and adult children. I have decided to call it the tetter-totter of life because when we are weak, our children are set free to rise up to help,  just as if they were sitting on the other end of a tetter-totter.

My husband was hospitalized for almost four days after a procedure to remove a small lesion, which was cancerous, off the lining in his bladder. The operation went perfectly but the experience was emotionally demanding.  it seems that when we were weak are children became stronger, filling in any gaps, any places of weakness in our lives. My children have overwhelmed my husband and I with their inner strength this week as they rallied to fill not only all our needs but as they blessed us with unexpected, extra acts of kindness.

My oldest daughter drove out and stayed with me, driving to the hospital, ducking out to buy special meals when my husband declared that a few of the hospital’s  meals were inedible. initially I scoffed at the idea that any meal was unpalatable but I must admit that even I could only manage a couple of mouthfuls of the hospitals’ version of ‘shepherd’s pie’ with dehydrated yellow beans, strange pineapple sorbet and coffee flavoured tea.

They trooped out to visit, brought gifts, snowplowed 25cm of snow down our long country lane (for 3 hours) and to started Christmas baking in exchange for grandma walking a teething baby with a sore throat and a heat rash. I imagine that in the coming decades we will experience the tetter-totter phenomena many times.