Back home again......

Awakened this morning (actually, this afternoon) to the beginning bars of 'Purple Haze' and surfaced up out of sleep--the National Weather Service letting me know it's gonna snow!! (This is a wonderful feature to have during tornado season--I get the alert at least 2 minutes before the warning is issued.) And tomorrow, since I've no place to go--let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.



It was nearly an hour after closing time before I even began getting things on the right track at work last night. Frustrated with my own lack of progress, I think I pretty much fumed for the first four hours I was there; until my buddy Bob in the Millworks Department and said, "Let me give you a little advice, my young friend. You can't be getting as mad over this stupid stuff as you got when you came in here tonight. You can't do it all by yourself.....I've had four heart attacks, and you will, too, as upset as you get by stupid stuff. If it ain't down--f--- it!!" He swatted at my shoulder. "You're a good girl. But you can't do all this alone. When you goin' home?" I smiled at him. "When it's done." He shook his head and walked away.



Four heart attacks......I sighed. Daddy just had his fifth one--while he probably should have known it, he didn't know it when it happened, and spent New Years Eve having stent number three put in. And anybody who knows me knows: I am that type 'A' personality. Balls to the wall, Mach 2 with my hair on fire, intense.....insert your own phrase. My father has two things he loves to do: sometimes, I am not speaking a word, but he will look at me from across a room and say, "SHUT UP!! I can hear your wheels turning all the way over here." His other favorite thing to tell me is 'throttle back out of zone five and cut the afterburners.' I called him this afternoon to see how he's recuperating, and for the first time in months, he coughed not once when I was on the phone with him. He sounded alert and rested, trying to stay warm, he said......hasn't needed the nitro since he's been home, and the follow up appointment for his mitral valve/cardiac rehab is February 9th--just after Bill returns from Reno, and I will more likely than not go to that appointment with him. He is also eating properly for the first time in God knows when--my stepmother has apparently taken this matter firmly in hand, and good for her. I told Dad he was outnumbered, and outnumbered by women, and MORGAN women at that--to hush and eat his rabbit food like a good boy.



2010, so far, has been a bust. I don't want to write off the whole year--it's only six days old. Hopefully, I will have clinicals in the fall to start.......and, last night, frustrated with the gargantuan job that lay ahead of me, and frustration with the situation on the homefront these days, my mind wandered off as I went about the cleaning, re-arranging and packdown last night.



My mind wandered off, as it so often does these days......and last night, for a change, it wandered off to something that is going to make this year the best our family has had in a long time.



The family reunion. I was smiling to myself for awhile last night, thinking of the time with the family--rather, the things that could happen when you get that many Morgans in that close of proximity to each other. We need to designate someone to call in the Marines right now. I am already looking to possibly putting in for a two week leave of absence that month; I will need the rest before clinicals start in August, and I am already regretting having taken vacation BEFORE the emotional roller coaster of the last three weeks.



Since we got our pavilion at the park reserved, there have been emails, text messages and Facebook jokes between those of us who are there. My cousin Brenda joked with me the other night that she was going to sneak gin into some of the punch, seeing as how gin makes me meaner than a rattlesnake. I smiled to myself that if someone plays the song 'Black Betty' and Ginger gets in the gin, too, the two of us will start chasing people up Jacksboro Highway. The vision of it made me laugh out loud.



I've even taken to carrying a little notebook with me, to jot down an idea for it as I might think of something. It's something that's anchoring me right now, keeping me grounded.

At two-thirty this morning, I made a final walk through of the aisles at work to see that everything was spit and polished; grounded to inspection side, as I would have said in my other life almost 20 years ago. I was still smiling a little at the thought of being with the whole family in July, even as I called out problems that I saw ("Nets!"......."Need to tape these boxes.......")

Not for the first time I was thankful for my thirty minute commute. We have a new radio station around here that plays classic country music--the kind that my sister and I used to listen to with Mom and Dad on cross-country trips to go home and be with the family when Dad was on leave. We would listen to it cruising down the highway in the very back seats of my parents' old station wagon.......wake up to it in the bed the back folded down into on the long trip out I-40 towards LaFollette......and Mamaw, and our aunts, uncles, and cousins. Last night I got into the car and flipped it over to that station and heard........

"Back Home Again," and YES, it is the John Denver song. I love that song. I remember my Dad playing it--on vinyl--when I was little. As an adult, I've come to appreicate it for--forgive the cheesy here--but the picture it paints is something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. In its way, the conversation taking place in the song sounds very much like getting 'back home again' to my family--there's all the news to catch up on; there's the little things going on around you--the sound of my aunt's voice (and Aunt Crys, you will be DELIGHTED to know--when I do something I know is wrong, I can just HEAR you saying, "Now, Cheri Lynn....")......the pictures in the living rooms of my relatives.....the smells of the food cooking in the kitchen--smells I can remember from the time before I could see up over the counter. The things that make you feel little again.....and safe. Warm. Loved. Even now that I'm a mother, and 35 years old--sometimes even I still want to be someone's little girl. And, not being able to sleep for a time after I got home, I dragged out my guitar and went online to find the chords to 'Back Home Again'........and was thrilled to see that they are four of the simplest chords ever.

The kisses that I live for,
The love that lights my way
The happiness that being with you brings me
It's the sweetest thing I know of
Just spending time with you
It's the little things that makes a house a home
Like a fire softly burning.....supper on the stove
And a light in your eyes that makes me warm......