The Call

I’m feeling very pensive, a bit lost in my emotional world.  I feel sensitive, raw and a bit bitchy.  I wonder why today is so different in outlook than, say, yesterday.  Then I remember, like a long lost thought, confusion finally settling, I am about to get my period.  How funny is that.  I am in my (very) early 40’s and still, every month, I am totally stunned by my intensely dramatic emotions that come on suddenly, like flu, and terrorize my mind only to eventually realize oh, it’s PMT/PMS.  Ha.  I wonder how many women are like me?

So I’m in my own world struggling through the stresses of work, family and life- choices, waiting for the Husband to ring about an important meeting, when I get The Call.  Eagerly, I answer the blocked number hoping that it is Lady Luck saying ‘Hello’, when I heard the voice of my son’s Head of School.  “I’m sure everything is fine,” he starts off slowly.  I’ll mention now that my son went on a school trip to the Grand Canyon and like all school trips, he left heavy-hearted.  “What’s up?” I ask.  Pause.  “We’re on our way to the hospital, your son fell on a rock and hit the back of his head pretty hard, but he seems okay.  We’re just making sure.”

Now, of all the calls I could have received, of all the thoughts controlling my mind, this was the farthest from my expectations and the one that could totally and utterly grip my heart.  The next twenty minutes were spent with manic phone calls between Husband, the doctor in the ER in Arizona and our local doctor here.  We insisted on a scan before he flies as he’s suffered a mild concussion for sure, only to be told that too much radiation to a 13 yr old’s brain could equally result in problems.  I just wanted to see my son.  I wanted to look in his eyes, and close mine, and feel my intuition.  But I couldn’t and I was scared.

When we finally called off the scan, my poor son was literally on the table, half-way into the CT machine, shaking from the experience himself.  He flew home a few hours later and was in my arms for the next several hours, until he fell asleep.  We watched him and stroked his hair like a little baby, checking he knew his name throughout the night.

Intuition is a strange and wonderful thing.  It’s a true sixth sense that can inspire me to carry on, keep my faith in something or give me strength to know which way to turn.  My son’s accident came at a time when I was completely wrapped up in our tiny world here.  All the stress that was going on was making me dig deeper and deeper into my faith and gut instincts to guide me along.  Needing, wanting Life to ‘call’ me, to change the course of luck – or lack of – was a plea to the Universe, as some would say.  I was putting it out there ten fold only to receive the hardest call ever.

But I heard the message loud and clear.  Take stock in where you truly have luck, be grateful and the rest, is simply life.  Up down, all around.  Life.  It’s so difficult sometimes to feel balanced when you feel enveloped in an energy field that is throwing you from the ground, from certainty, and what you really believe in begins to look like fantasy.

In our case, that is when the argument to move back, to return to what you think you can control more, rears its head.  Have I made the right decision to move?  If it’s right for the kids but not right for the husband, is it still right?  He’s happy if I’m happy, but knowing myself the way I do, I’m not selfish enough to carry the decision based on me.  And frankly, I am happy in both places.  All I know is that my intuition tells me to be calm and remain quietly optimistic and just ride the tide.

Off to the beach…