swing high swing low

three days ago i was rejoicing over something as simple as poop in a potty and then last night i got a call that swung me back to the other side of things.

i knew my mom was going in for some tests yesterday. i thought it was gonna be pretty routine. she called me in the morning to tell me she was on her way to the doctor's office. i chatted a little but i was pretty distracted as is my normal state on the phone these days. i told her goodbye and i love you and then i didn't give it much thought after that. i did think about it again around 1. she told me she was going to call after the tests. when she didn't i figured it was because she got busy with something else.

the phone rang at 6:30. i let it go to voicemail. matt was still at PBA teaching his night classes and so after dinner i put micah in the shower, beatrix into the tub, i was cleaning up the kitchen and i was trying to finish nursing penelope. i was doing too much at once. while a friend held the baby, i finally had a chance to listen to her voicemail. she said that she didn't have kidney stones and that the blood in her urine was probably just because the infection was so bad, but she did want to talk to me about something else. that phrase is never good after your mom has gone to the doctor.

i called her back. bracing myself. she started off chit chatty...i wanted her to get right to it. so i asked. she told me that they did a CT scan of her abdomen and they found a tumor on her liver...silence. a what? a tumor on her liver. she told me it was small, 3 cm. but to me a tumor is a tumor is a tumor. a tumor. she told me they were going to send her to a liver specialist. she was still going to go on the trip with her family this weekend to mexico. she used the phrase, "it will be special." i didn't like the sound of that. i asked her how she was doing and she told me she had peace. she had been singing the song, "the Lord is good" over and over in her head. that is a whole nother discussion as far as i am concerned. she also told me that it was small, it could just be a collection of cells and vessels like her aneurysm was in her head. it could be non-cancerous. or it could be what i am dreading...cancer.

i just stood there at the sink, washing dishes. micah was yelling his head off for me. beatrix was screaming every 5 seconds meme, meme! penelope started to cry. she has gas. it is ridiculous how my life is all about poop right now, one who just put it in the potty and another one who can't seem to get it out. i was standing there with all of this going on around me and i couldn't think of anything to say. i probably failed right then at supporting my mom in her hour of need. but i found myself needy. and like so many times in my life when i get hard news, or something tough is coming i wanted to run. run out of that house and just keep running. run right down the street. i wanted to run to get a drink and then run to get a cigarette. i just wanted to run. i swallowed and turned off the water, then i said goodbye to my mom. i told her i needed to go and take care of the kids. but i still wanted to run.

i couldn't though. in fact the opposite happened. i was more than glued to that house. i finally got beatrix out of the tub and into bed with help from a friend, i got micah out of the shower, dressed and into bed, and i finished feeding penelope who continued to cry off and on for the next 4 hours. in the midst of that insanity i had lots of time to think and pray. i thought about anything and everything i could think of in those 4 hours. i had no way of escape and it was probably the best thing for me.

i don't know what is going to happen with my mom. it could be something simple like a surgery to remove it and that is it. or it could be. well, the other. i do know this much. she has gone through so much physically that it would be great if she could catch a break on this one. please God, could you let my mom catch a break? ...please?

i need to take it one day at a time.
its amazing to me how life can swing so high but just as quickly it can swing terribly low.