(I originally posted this in July 2011, shortly after it happened, but since I make a reference to it to Mom in my next post, I'm putting it here now.)
My gorgeous sister Dana stayed with me when she
came to San Francisco to see our mother, and when she returned to Chicago, she
sent me a really nice e-mail message thanking me and enumerating all the things
I'd done to make her feel welcome. This was very reassuring because I think
of myself as a very bad hostess--the kind who closes the front door as soon as
a guest leaves instead of walking the guest to the guest to their car. I
responded and we continued an e-mail conversation. (Dana hates the
telephone the way I do. In fact, once she e-mailed me to say, "I'm
about to call you. DON'T PICK UP." She and I don't mind
message machines.) She thanked me for helping make the visit fun and
interesting and called me words like generous and thoughtful. Just
when I was wondering what she meant by that, she specified: "You
drove!!You laid out towels, made the best salad, introduced me to delicacies in
cans i'd never seen (I'll have to include my recipe for Vietnamese Fruit
Dessert on this blog), played your favorite documentary that i had not seen but
had heard about (The Tillman Story, the best movie I saw in 2010 but one
that was very quickly taken out of theatres) opened the door when we came too
late."
Too late is like after 8:00 p.m.
My sweet sister even thanked me for the sunflower seeds I gave her because I remember that she liked them when we were children.
She gave me credit for talking while I drove, which for her and me is quite a stunt.
But what she was especially grateful for was what I told her about our teaching our ESL students to interrupt. She said she'd like to hear more about that, so I sent her a Deborah Tannen article called, "Don't just sit there. Interrupt!" (This should be a separate blog.) She also said it was "inspiring" to see how I live in a world of 4am-8pm, but we kept our e-mail dialogue going so strong that it was already almost 11:00 when I went to bed feeling really good about my sister and me.
Then, the following morning at 3:45 I got a call from her son Karl, who has lived in SF for the past few years, saying that she had fallen down the stairs at home and hit her head and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Her C-2 vertebra was fractured, and her spine was out of alignment. He also said something about the cerebral artery and the chance of a stroke. I was in agony until he said, "But the good news is that she can move all extremities, and she has a normal brain scan." A normal brain scan? Has anyone in our family ever had a normal brain?
I picked Karl up and drove him to the airport and felt like getting on the plane myself.
I called Karl...on the telephone...and he kept me up to date. Then, the night before she was to have surgery, I called her...on the telephone...and left a messages. Then she called me back...and I picked up! We talked for 30 minutes, and she told me that she'd started giving orders right away after being admitted to the hospital. "I told them to go home and get me a cute outfit. I told them I wanted to get my nails done."
I told her how impressed I was that she was wearing a halo. I'd already sent her my vision of her that way--a very live angel, mind you. The idea of the hereafter had never occurred to me. I thought of her HERE. NOW. I commented that while men were falling head over heels in love with her at first sight, she was just falling head over heels. I hoped that halos healed. And I'd put her face and body under the halos I found online. She wanted to disabuse me of my incorrect notion and had her boyfriend/man servant e-mail me pictures of her in her halo, which they called a crown. She looked gorgeous and glamorous even with the device. The pictures came in to my Outlook Box every two minutes for two days. By then the operation was over, and it was a great success! Karl took her home, and then he flew back to San Francisco to move out of his apartment and move everything to Vallejo, where he'll be going to med school at Touro University. In fact, I'm due to pick him up now. Maybe I'll be able to talk while I drive. Wish me luck!
Too late is like after 8:00 p.m.
My sweet sister even thanked me for the sunflower seeds I gave her because I remember that she liked them when we were children.
She gave me credit for talking while I drove, which for her and me is quite a stunt.
But what she was especially grateful for was what I told her about our teaching our ESL students to interrupt. She said she'd like to hear more about that, so I sent her a Deborah Tannen article called, "Don't just sit there. Interrupt!" (This should be a separate blog.) She also said it was "inspiring" to see how I live in a world of 4am-8pm, but we kept our e-mail dialogue going so strong that it was already almost 11:00 when I went to bed feeling really good about my sister and me.
Then, the following morning at 3:45 I got a call from her son Karl, who has lived in SF for the past few years, saying that she had fallen down the stairs at home and hit her head and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Her C-2 vertebra was fractured, and her spine was out of alignment. He also said something about the cerebral artery and the chance of a stroke. I was in agony until he said, "But the good news is that she can move all extremities, and she has a normal brain scan." A normal brain scan? Has anyone in our family ever had a normal brain?
I picked Karl up and drove him to the airport and felt like getting on the plane myself.
I called Karl...on the telephone...and he kept me up to date. Then, the night before she was to have surgery, I called her...on the telephone...and left a messages. Then she called me back...and I picked up! We talked for 30 minutes, and she told me that she'd started giving orders right away after being admitted to the hospital. "I told them to go home and get me a cute outfit. I told them I wanted to get my nails done."
I told her how impressed I was that she was wearing a halo. I'd already sent her my vision of her that way--a very live angel, mind you. The idea of the hereafter had never occurred to me. I thought of her HERE. NOW. I commented that while men were falling head over heels in love with her at first sight, she was just falling head over heels. I hoped that halos healed. And I'd put her face and body under the halos I found online. She wanted to disabuse me of my incorrect notion and had her boyfriend/man servant e-mail me pictures of her in her halo, which they called a crown. She looked gorgeous and glamorous even with the device. The pictures came in to my Outlook Box every two minutes for two days. By then the operation was over, and it was a great success! Karl took her home, and then he flew back to San Francisco to move out of his apartment and move everything to Vallejo, where he'll be going to med school at Touro University. In fact, I'm due to pick him up now. Maybe I'll be able to talk while I drive. Wish me luck!
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