Helping Friends = Feeling Happiness

It started with an e-mail and then a phone call with a question & a request for help. Before I knew it, I was knee-deep in a well-organized and well-planned fund-raiser for someone I barely knew! Was it the fact that I am unable to form the words NO as my husband claims?? Not this time. It was more the thought of helping someone who was really in an unenviable situation that could happen to anyone at anytime....

Many of us in the Fredericksburg area remember Dr. Brian Buckley as the doctor who would actually take the time to listen to a patient rather than shuttle that person out the door with a script for meds in hand in less time than it took to actually make it into the inner sanctum of the office! Things were going reasonably well for this wonderful family who gave so much of themselves to the community in which they lived. Then, out of nowhere, sheer exhaustion hit & the doctor became the patient - final verdict: liver 1, doctor 0. The cold hard facts involved a liver that wouldn't function and the need to find a living donor for a transplant. What no one was counting on was the horrific reality of our insurance system! No job, no insurance, monstrous co-pay for life-saving surgery...

Enter a few friends who have, upon many occasions, thrown together events of great proportions on shoe-string budgets with fantastic results! It was into this event that I found myself being drawn & the more that I found out about the situation, the more involved I felt myself becoming. If there's one thing I've learned about being a southern woman, it's that when faced with a challenge, we rise to the occasion & deliver our best!

As I watched the evening unfold, I marveled at how each woman handled her assigned task with grace & efficiency. Seeing so many old friends mingling and bidding with great zeal on the various auction items, made me proud to be in this fine group. Everyone seemed determined to not only have fun but to raise the much-needed funds for this family who had been so much to so many in our community.

At the conclusion of this momentous evening, we patted each other on the back, cleaned up the venue & mused on how determination can make things happen. Although we certainly didn't raise all we had hoped to, we made a dent in that co-pay and more importantly, gave old friends the opportunity to reconnect and make a difference. And yet, the best moment was yet to come for me -- just hearing from Brian's wife how touched they were made it all worthwhile. Shirley mentioned that "pay it forward" concept during our conversation and said that they had vowed to indeed pay it forward once the surgery & recovery were achieved. Just hearing the joy and emotion in her voice made me incredibly proud to have been part of this little event. Kudos to my friend, Mary, who made it all happen with sheer determination and love... and a little help from her friends. So for all those bearers of gloom & doom who say people just don't care about their fellow man anymore, I say come on down and see what a handful of southern women can do when they have a daunting objective in their path that they all feel must be defeated. As the song goes, we are strong, we are invincible, we are women!

Finding Time!

As with everything else in life, I started my blogging thinking (optimistically!) that I would have plenty of time to make entries on a daily basis. Then "Life" (with a capital L) intervened to bring me back to reality. Parenting three active growing children these days isn't quite as easy as it seems when I think back to my own childhood. Somehow it seemed so much slower and easier then than it is now!

In the midst of the flurry that is our daily existence, we had a remarkable breath of fresh air last weekend! Our oldest received an important sacrament last Saturday when he was confirmed in our church. As the leader of his confirmation preparation team, I walked with my ten students through the two year process and felt that last Saturday, we were walking through a door into a new chapter of their lives. At the outset of this preparation, I was concerned that several of my students were not spiritually ready for confirmation. I even mentioned that I thought my group was the "challenge group" because some of them did not seem serious about their faith at all. I've learned, however, that the Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways! As we worked our way through the program, I felt such frustration but kept praying for my students. My prayers were answered in a large part on the evening of our team interview with one of our priests. Virtually all of my students were able to answer the questions reasonably well and some even surprised me with the intuitiveness of their answers! It was very obvious to me that the confirmation booklet which was prepared with great care by our pastor and which required the confirmandi to work through the booklet with their families. It certainly is truly amazing what communication can do to grow the faith of both confirmandi and parents!

The actual Confirmation and the subsequent reception were spiritually uplifting! The military bishop, Bishop Higgins, was a delight -- he had such empathy with the young confirmandi. The Confirmation Mass was perfect and all those with whom I've spoken expressed how wonderful the day was! Our parish has been working towards making our young people feel part of the church community and the Confirmation reaped the rewards of this effort. Many of us remember feeling that Confirmation was the end of a process -- our group is aware that this is the opening of a new part of their spiritual lives where they will take a more active part in their church community and continue to grow their faith.

Calamity of the Week, Day or Hour? Chris' story!

Ever have one of those days when nothing seems to go right? Welcome to my world! But maybe I should back-track so you'll understand my plight...

We are a family of five - mom, dad, almost 14 yo son Chris, 10 yo daughter Victoria and 8 yo son Sean. Formerly a medical technologist and then a teacher, we decided that I would be a stay-at-home mom shortly after our daughter was born.

Fast forward a few years... All three children are attending our parish school, Holy Cross Academy. Chris is in 8th grade and will be graduating this year. It seems like only yesterday, I was tearfully bidding him goodbye on his first day of kindergarten! Victoria is in 5th grade and Sean is in 3rd grade. I am what might be described as a "volunteer junkie" at our school -- I tend to throw myself into whatever volunteer task is at hand - currently, I'm a co-chair of the Copy Room Volunteers, the Uniform Closet, the PTO webmaster, Cafeteria Volunteer, 3rd grade co-room mom, and the parent liaison for Virginia Catholic Conference. Add to that, an occasional subbing job (less of that this year as our funds are tight at the school) and my participation in our parish Moms' group on Friday mornings, and you might say my plate is full!

Our oldest son has always been the typical "firstborn" child -- he wasn't into hitting, biting, making messes, wreaking havoc on the house, etc. Healthy child, a few allergies, biggest issue was ezcema brought on by allergies - nothing earth-shattering! Then, as if to make up for all those peaceful years, eighth grade reared its ugly head...

First week of school -- August 30th, Chris has his first flag football game of the season at the Fredericksburg Field House. Dad is coaching the team and everyone is in attendance. Within the first five minutes of play, Chris is down as he has been down perhaps hundreds of times before, and yet this time there's a difference! As he fell onto the turf-covered cement floor, he tried to stop that fall with his left arm, and in doing so, came down on it at a poor angle and snapped both the radius & ulna several inches above the wrist. Big drama ensued, as Chris was whisked away via ambulance to Mary Washington's ER department. End result -- closed fracture, no pins necessary (whew!), bright Mets-orange cast over the elbow for 4-6 weeks.

Bones having healed nicely, the cast finally comes off - yuck! The ezcema has caused skin breakdown so Chris is deemed as not to casted again unless absolutely necessary. Okay, we can deal with that! Wrist brace goes on to help that wrist rehab a bit. Chris thinks - "I'm free of the cast! Yeehaw - back to football at recess I go!" A few weeks later, open gym in preparation for basketball tryouts and boom - wrist got jostled excessively during a lay-up attempt on Chris' part so we're back in the doctor's office. Despite a possible crack in one of the healing bones, Chris was cleared to try out for basketball and made the team again for the third year.

First week of basketball practice, the school nurse tracked me down after recess to let me know that Chris has somehow fallen during a football game and can't seem to put much weight on his foot. Off we went to Prime Care after school because they had an xray machine and it wasn't the ER - heaven forbid! The doctor seemed to think it was sprained but might be broken as well. First thing the next morning, we were back in the orthopedist's office -- sprain in the left outer ankle joint with a "dancer's fracture" of the distal metatarsal bone in his foot. Into an "air cast" style boot and on the crutches he went!

After some gradual transition to walking without crutches on the boot, Chris graduated to a lace-up ankle brace and a script for physical therapy. But alas, the physical therapy was to be post-poned for the following week, Chris was on his way out to recess with his friends and managed to step into a hole on the field, twist the same ankle which, though "protected" by the lace-up ankle brace, ended up causing him so much pain that ... you guessed it! We were back in the orthopedist's office the following morning. And... drumroll please... the inner left ankle joint was now broken! Back into the boot and back on crutches for another few weeks. No weight on the ankle, please. Too bad Chris seemed to have missed that admonition! But, as he must have a very cooperative guardian angel, his ankle managed to heal well enough despite Chris' inability to follow the doctor's directions.

Noting the absence of crutches and boot, teachers & friends alike began to wonder aloud how long Chris could go without another injury... would it be minutes, hours, days, weeks?? Four days... four days! As I was going about my daily household chores this morning, the school nurse, who no doubt feels like Chris is her "frequent flier of the year" in the clinic, called to let me know that Chris had been playing basketball out on the blacktop during recess. During the course of the game, he had jumped up and fallen backwards onto the blacktop, hitting his head and blacking out in the process.

So here I am, waiting to hear back from Dad, who has taken Chris to his "home away from home," the over-crowded ER... And I am off to collect my other two from school and begin the never-ending task of homework completion! Tune in later for more exciting thrills!