The Good Stuff

It's been a truly wonderful weekend here on Ho-Hum Drive. Oh by all accounts, it shouldn't have been. I've caught a cold that I'm sure I picked up from Stomp. You see Stomp's super about remembering to cough into his elbow unless he's home sick snuggling Mama. Then he coughs into Mama's elbow...or hand...or mouth. So it was really no surprise I caught his cold. And I've been pretty miserable. But all that aside, it was a wonderful weekend.

Saturday we had a birthday party for one of the kiddos in the Trailerhood. My girlfriend Chelise has two girls who rock our boy-infested world. They are head over heels crazy about The Viking. And I guess they like me okay since they've decided to call me "Aunt Mamas". The story is that I'm like an aunt to them but I also look out for them and protect them and care for them when their Mama can't be around, so I'm like a mama too. Anyway, there was a birthday party for one of the little princesses and we had a great time. It's always wonderful to get together with friends who love you and who get you and who don't care that you're a) a little floopy from the cough syrup and b) hacking up a lung. The weather was beautiful and it just felt so nice to breathe in all that fresh air and all that unbridled, overflowing, incredible kid energy. It's good for the soul.

Unfortunately I may have overdone it a bit and I came home and fell asleep (yes at 7:00 p.m., don't judge me!). I spent the next 24 hours or so waking every 4 hours to take cough syrup and eat and then fall back asleep. Not the most exciting way to spend a Sunday but I got to be comforted and cared for by my Viking. I'm always touched and awed by the sweet way he tends to my every need when I'm sick. He's been like this as long as I can remember. In fact, when we were just 18, right after we'd moved in together, I came down with walking pneumonia. I spent a lot of nights up all night, sick and coughing and feverish. He spent a lot of nights up with me. It hasn't changed one bit all these years later. In the middle of the night when I'm awake and shaky and cold and coughing and flat out miserable, he always wakes up (at least partially) too. He reaches up and smooths my hair or rubs my neck or holds my hand or kisses the top of my head. And I am soothed and comforted and, I daresay, healed a bit of whatever ails me. There's incredible healing power in the touch of the man who loves you. Someone should bottle it and sell it as a miracle cure.

So anyway, I was under the weather and more than a little miserable but I was also loved and cared for and nursed. And while I'm still physically ill, my spirits are fine and my heart is full.

He said: "Spent five years in the bottle,
When the cancer took her from me.
But I've been sober three years now,
'Cause the one thing stronger than the whiskey:
Was the sight of her holdin' my baby girl.
The way she adored that string of pearls,
I gave her the day that our youngest boy, Earl,
Married his high school love."
An' it's a new tee-shirt saying: 'I'm a Grandpa'.
Bein' right there as our time got small,
An' holdin' her hand, when the Good Lord called her up,
Yeah, man, that's the good stuff."
- "The Good Stuff" -- Kenny Chesney