Sour Patch Kids, Stephen Curry, Family, Friends, Prayers, Costco Cards, & Tender Mercies

"Physical restrictions can expand vision. Limited stamina can clarify priorities. Inability to do many things can direct focus to a few things of greatest importance." (Elder David A. Bednar, Chosen To Bear Testimony of My Name, Ensign, November 2015)

We were humbled to see all the people who came to visit Tess. They brought cookies and Sour Patch Kids and hugs and Sour Patch Kids and lunch and dinner and Sour Patch Kids and balloons and stuffed animals and well, you know, Sour Patch Kids. They listened to Tess’ animated babblings about crowd-surfing, college life and Stephen Curry. If you don’t know who Steph Curry is, please don’t tell Tess because she will cry real tears for you because you don’t know how wonderful he is. At least that’s how she was in the hospital. 

Family :)

Coaches

Friends

 Friends

Teachers

And more friends with food.

(There are so many more that came that I didn't get pictures of. THANK YOU!!!!)


My daughter, Bri, took vacation days to be with Tess. She cleaned the blood out of her matted hair, and washed her body, and spent entire days just being there in case Tess needed something. As a mom, this is the ultimate payback—to see your children truly love and care for each other, to put their siblings needs above their own.

A cute boy that Tess had started dating about a month before her accident came to visit. He walked in with a stuffed monkey and Tess very excitedly asked where he got it. When he told her Costco, she was a little perplexed because how in the heck do you get into that place unless your mom is with you with her card?  “How did you get into Costco?” she asked.

“I have a Costco card,” he replied.

“You have a Costco card?” Tess gushed. “That makes you SO much more attractive.”

So, this attractive boy with a Costco card sat by her side and didn’t mind that her hair was all matted and bloody because he came before the sister worked her magic. He listened to her talk about Stephen Curry and he understood what she was talking about. He held her hand while she slept and when she would pull the oxygen out of her nose and her monitor would go off, he would very gently stick it back in her nose. He called her at nights and read scriptures to her because reading is a hard thing to do with brain damage. He talked to her about her future, a future that did not include going to school that semester and a future that did include lots of therapy. He was supportive and kind and so much more helpful than Mom or Dad even though Mom and Dad have Costco cards too.

So, here is the part of the story that happened after the hospital:

About a month after her accident, Tess was cleared to participate in any and all activities except crowd-surfing. What was supposed to be months of physical, occupational, and speech therapy, ended up being a few visits. She has no lasting effects from her accident. No headaches. Her filter is working. She doesn’t cry if you don’t know Steph Curry, although she is slightly miffed. In short, her recovery is nothing short of miraculous. She literally floated on the prayers, faith and kindness of so many.

She is back in her apartment, though not attending classes. She just got a job coaching the Freshman girls basketball team at Logan High School. And although they live 4 hours apart, she is still seeing the cute boy with the Costco card. #blessed



Some of the great people that work at University Hospital:

Nurse Laura, they're still tight.

Nurse Jeremy, no sponge bathing for him--just lots of laughing together and consumption of Sour Patch Kids.

Celine from housekeeping. She sang for Tess and told her about the Rwandan Genocide where most of her family died--a very inspirational young woman. They are now FB friends. 

Butterfly

Eighteen years ago I had a baby. They put her in my arms and I cried, not because something was wrong, but because everything was right. I cried because I was old enough and had been pregnant enough to understand all that could have gone wrong. I was humbled that many don’t get to hold one baby, let alone six. I cried because she was perfect and pure and filled with love and light and everything good. I cried because her fingers curled around mine with complete trust. I cried because this tiny girl who had grown next to my heart, now held a piece of it. I held her through the night. Nurses came into my room to take her, and I wouldn’t put her down. I caressed her skin and kissed her tiny head. I felt the delicate puffs of her quivering breath. I was holding 7 lbs. of pure miracle.

At the end of August, I sent that daughter to Utah State. She made it until Labor Day weekend. Then she called us. She was hysterical, laughing one minute, crying the next. Something about a dance, a fall, her head…  Finally, her roommate took the phone. She was crowd-surfing (which is really just a trust exercise with strangers) and had fallen on her head. At first she experienced a temporary paralysis. Her first thought, “Crap, I’m paralyzed. How embarrassing.” After several seconds, she was able to move her arms and legs and jumped up and said, “I’m fine!” Only she wasn’t. The back of her head was bleeding.

Some smart friends loaded her in a car and drove her to the ER. Some other smart friends who are priesthood holders for our church jumped in the backseat and gave her a priesthood blessing. She was blessed that she would feel no pain. Her pain disappeared.

When they got to the ER, the doctor checked her and said she would need staples in her head, but everything else looked good. Immediately, she felt anxiety about having someone use a stapler on her head. (Why this anxiety failed to manifest itself while she was crowd-surfing is a mystery.) Her bishop came and gave her another blessing. He blessed her that her fears would go away and that she would have peace. Her anxiety vanished.

Before sending her home, they decided to do a CT scan. The CT scan showed that she had a brain bleed. When she hit the ground, her brain bounced off the back of her skull and hit the front of her skull and started to bleed. Not good. She needed to be at a hospital with a neurosurgeon. So, in the wee hours of the morning, they transported her from Logan to Salt Lake City.

When she arrived, she looked awful, but was in great spirits.

I found out later that the front part of your brain is where your filter is. Your dominant personality traits come out. People usually think you’re drunk or on something if you injure this part of your brain. Tess is an outgoing, friendly, go-go-go type of girl. So, we were seeing Tess on steroids. She had the ambulance staff and the ER laughing. Since there was so much laughing, I wasn’t too worried. They would look her over and we would be home soon. But we weren’t.

Apparently brain injuries can be funny and serious. The next few days the adrenaline wore off and the headaches came. I thought about what would have happened if the back of her head wasn’t bleeding and she didn’t go to the ER and the doctor wouldn’t have discovered her brain bleed. I thought about the baby I held 18 years ago.  I slid into the hospital bed next to her. I curled my body around her like a protective cocoon.  I listened to her quiet breathing. I felt the rise and fall of her breath against my sheltering arms and I cried for what might have been and I cried tears of gratitude for what was.  I cried because I would get to see this beautiful daughter who was full of light and love and goodness fly.

Blogging, Math, Cruises and Red Ribbon Week

Blogging feels overwhelming and a bit daunting right now, like exercising and laundry and visiting teaching and dust and what to make for dinner. Oh and math. Math is scary. I used to break out in hives everyday of 6th grade when we did math,  My teacher would send me to the sick room. Now I think about writing and break out in cellulite. It's kind of the same thing except at this house there is no sick room, just dust and dinner that needs to be made and laundry and me not exercising.

The ocean is also scary and overwhelming and daunting. And big. I have always been terrified of that place. This is probably because I grew up watching "Gilligan's Island" and watching movies like the "Poseidon Adventure" and "Jaws" at a young age. I also drank out of the garden hose, didn't wear a seat belt, and I don't even think bike helmets were invented. Anyway, it's not dying in the ocean, it's living in the ocean that terrifies me. If you do not think this is a scary thing, you haven't been watching Finding Nemo or reading the Reader's Digest for the past 20 years. Every time I start to convince myself that the ocean is "ok," the R.D. publishes a story about someone that fell off a boat and treaded water for 4 days and was almost eaten by sharks and saw 4 boats and 9 airplanes before their eyeballs were sunburned out of their sockets until they were finally rescued so that they could begin therapy for the rest of their lives. I'm just sayin that if I were my ancestors, I'd still be living in the mother country, far from the sea.

But this summer I faced my fear and went on a cruise. A cruise is like a small country with too much food and too much gambling and a walking art gallery of tattoos floating in the ocean. And yes, even though I'm back, my stomach rolls just thinking about it. (Did I mention there are a lot more rolls on my stomach?") Not the I'm going to throw-up kind of roll, but the roll you get coming down the first hill of a roller coaster. But at least it's just that and not the hyperventilating and near passing out that happened to me 25 years ago when we crossed Galveston Bay. In a car.

So I can cross "face my fear of the ocean" off my 50 things to do before I'm 50 list. And I can add, "lose the 7 pounds that I gained on my cruise," because I did a lot of self-medicating on the cruise, food  being my drug of choice. So now I am having my own red ribbon week month. Just say NO! NO! NO! NO!

When I wasn't panicking about the lack of land and the fact that the ocean was 6,000+ feet deep and full of lurking creatures, I enjoyed:

kissing stingrays

and dolphins

and this hottie on the beach

and spending time with these people.

DLF>DNF>>DNS

She did light it up. (See previous post.) I even got to yell, YARD SALE when she actually did drop her stick after getting clobbered in the head. BTW clobbering people in the head with your stick is illegal and gets you a yellow card and a time-out.

Now I am not complaining, I am just stating some observations out loud: a championship game should be played on a neutral field, not on the home field of one of the teams who happens to be at a very high altitude that nobody else plays at. Also, if you are going to promise the opposing team a locker room and air conditioning at half-time, you should probably do so, or at the very least provide some shade, or else the parents of the opposing team might be watching their daughters panting in the hot sun and start making observations.

With that being said, you have probably figured out that we did not win. Perhaps if playing conditions had been different, we still wouldn't have won. PC is a great team. I guess we will never know. What I do know is that #2 is not a bad place to be. Recently Tess didn't try out for something because she wasn't sure if she could win. She regretted this decision and realized that not trying was worse than not winning. Thus DLF (dead last finish) is greater than DNF (did not finish) which is greater greater than DNS (did not start).

Winning is great, but it's more important to show up, to put everything on the line and know that you gave it your best. I know I've quoted Cool Runnings before but here we go again:

Irv: Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough *with* one.

[Turns to leave]

Derice Bannock: Hey coach, how will I know if I'm enough?

Irv: When you cross that finish line tomorrow, you'll know.

In case you were wondering what number 2 looks like, it looks like this:

 and this:

and this:

And my favorite from G-Pa, who might not know how old he is or how to tie his shoes but has all the important stuff down:

   "You did it again!"

                                                                                                                         "You won!"

Taser Tess

Tomorrow is the women's high school Division 1 Lacrosse Championship game. At least here it is. Women's lacrosse is a combination of Red Light Green Light and Mother May I. Men's lacrosse is kind of like legalized assault and battery. It looks like this:

And this:

I am no longer allowed to watch men's lacrosse because I yell things like, "KILL HIM!" and I jump up and down and throw things and I totally look like one of these parents:

and I don't even know who's playing.

Girls wear skirts when they play, that is how nice women's lacrosse is. Need I say more? Men's lacrosse is all about brute strength. Women's Lacrosse is all about skill and agility.

My daughter's uniform looks kind of like this except the white parts are grass-stained, and food-stained and blood-stained and the red parts are purple.

This is an action shot of T. and explains why her jersey isn't white. She claims she got tripped. BTW, this is called a "yard sale" when a player loses her stick. So, if you are at a women's lacrosse game and a player loses her stick, yell, "yard sale!" politely of course.

In case you are wondering, my daughter does have hands. Two of them.

Last week to promote team unity, the captains kidnapped all the players in the middle of the night. This is the kind of thing girls do while guys usually just smack each other on the butt.

The only problem with kidnapping my T. is that we live 20 minutes away from where Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped. We searched for her. We've read all the books. So when the LaX girls came to kidnap T., they couldn't get into her room because the door was locked. So they pounded and they scratched and when T yelled, "Who is it?" they pounded louder.

Now I would have totally intervened if I wasn't in the room of resting finishing up some paperwork. The husband would have intervened if he wasn't lying on the bed with a pillow over his head cursing team bonding activities and puberty in general.

The next thing we know, there is screaming because this happened:

I kind of forgot that she sleeps with a taser. Apparently, she needs more practice because she didn't even hit anyone. Maybe next year.

I hope she lights it up on the field tomorrow, politely of course in her grass-stained skirt.

A Few of My Favorite Things this Week

A few of my favorite things this week:

My man-child who cannot stop reading. I used to make him sit with me on my bed and read for 30 minutes a day. He would cry and tell me I was the meanest mom in the world. Now I sit on his bed at night and make him give me my book and he tells me that I am the meanest mom in the world. I love being mean.

Toast Corner. Toast Corner is what happens in my daughter's AP Engl/lang class when you are hungry because your mom hasn't been grocery shopping for 3 weeks, or you decide you'd rather put on mascara or clothes instead of eating a bowl of cereal. There is no judging, just bread and butter and jam and a little cup for a 15 cent donation. 

My new friend, B.T. She's been to Costco and back, and I think you all know what I'm really getting at here because you know how I feel about Costco. Let's just say that it is definitely not my idea of the HPOE (happiest place on earth). But she is ALWAYS smiling. She is ALWAYS grateful. She is always HOPEFUL. She is so INSPIRATIONAL.

My new ottoman. It is awesome because my husband bought it for me and he hates it. If he furnished/decorated the house, everything would be painted white, and we would have a folding chair in each corner of the room. He's all about space and no clutter and so am I. I space and I clutter. If he loses his day job, he could probably get a job decorating prison cells.

No roly-poly bugs in my cupboards. My two, adorable granddaughters, Charlotte and Lila, love roly- poly bugs--not to eat--that would be my adorable granddaughter Jena, who also likes to eat rocks. They will hunt polies for hours in my backyard in a cup--which is one thing I have going for me that the other grandmas don't--a yard full of roly-poly bugs. One day I found a cup of you-know-whats in my cupboard. Fortunately, I didn't find roly-polies in the cupboard, so I did myself a little happy dance. However, I did find one on my bathroom floor. I don't even want to think about it. Some interesting facts about roly polies:

1. Roly-poly bugs don't urinate, which I think would be an awesome super-power to have. . .Do you have any idea how much time that would save? Can you imagine the diapering and potty training years if you were a roly-poly mama? And what about road trips. Wahoo!

2.  A roly-poly bug can drink with its mouth and its tra-la-la-boom-de-ay. (People that is a nice way of saying anus in case you are wondering.) Not really a skill I'm envying. Not really seeing any practical use for that. Hmmm, definitely not as cool as juggling.

3.  Roly poly-bugs eat their own poop. (See number 2 above)

4.  And finally, roly-poly bugs bleed blue. Go cougars?

(I think I just squirreled. Back to what we're talking about here, my favorite things. Yes you may sing if you'd like.)

I got this cool present called an appointment for a family picture for Mother's Day. It also came with a guarantee that nobody will complain and everyone will wear whatever I say and everyone has to show up and smile and be happy. This present is kind of like being dictator of a small country for an hour.

I have lots more favorite things, but I will save them for another time that is not 12:20 a.m. on a school night? morning?

What are some of your favorite things this week?

The Present I Would Take

Happy birthday Mom! You would be 71 if you were here, but you have been gone for almost 8 years now.

Mom, if you were here, I wouldn't spend time looking for a unique gift or searching for the perfect card. I did that while you were alive and when you died, you left all those things here and well, they are just things; so instead of giving, I would take.

I would take back every eye-roll, every heavy sigh, every thought that smacked of "you don't understand; things are different now."  I would take back every unkind thought or word. I would take back all the times I hid when you came back from the store because I didn't want to carry in the groceries.

I would take all your thoughts and memories. I would sit down with you and ask about every minute of your life. I would fill my mind with stories of you. I would ask how you felt when you left home; how you felt when you got your first kiss; how you felt when you buried my sister. I would ask you why you wanted to be a vet and why you didn't become one. I would ask you what you feared most and what gave you the greatest joy. Why did you get along with your dad better than your mom? I would ask about the worst times in your life and how you got through them. What would you go back and change if you could?  What did you dream of doing?  Because, it has occurred to me that your 9:00 to 5:00 desk job was probably not your dream life.

I would listen and take everything you said and ponder it over and over in my mind and carry your words in my heart and breath them into my soul and I would be a better person because I would have a bigger part of you with me.

50 things to do before I'm 50

I have this friend named Brittany M. who is amazing. Really, is there any thing she can't do? She made this list of 40 things to do before she turns 40. Because she kind of inspired me, I had to make a stinking list of 50 things to do before I turn 50 because because I already turned 40. But now I am mostly just exasperated and tired and trying to think of 29 more things to do. My kids tried to help me by adding skinny dipping to the list. Ha, if I did add that, I would write chunky dunking. I am "blathering" all this because blogging once a week is number 8 on my list followed by finish my Christmas craft from 2010.

To simplify this daunting task, I might start adding things that I've already done because this is the best way to make to-do-lists. Remember I discussed the merits of this before in another post. This works well for me because I can cross off items as soon as I add them, and folks that is a stress-reliever. And stress is a bad thing; it causes wrinkles, and cancer and male patterned baldness.

So if I were to add things I've already done this week to my list, I might add:

* Sat through a college graduation. Really, we can put a man on the moon but we can't make graduation a little more entertaining?
* I got my teeth cleaned. Have I mentioned that I'd rather go through childbirth than have any kind of dental procedure? Yes, it was grueling and yes I made a voodoo doll of my hygienist and yes I need therapy.
* I finished Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. Okay, for a girl that doesn't generally like fantasy, I LOVE this series. Book 1 is The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance is book 2. Did I mention that they are each over 1,000 pages? Now my favorite cuss phrase is "storm it all" and I am contemplating having another child so that I can name him Kaladin Stormblessed Campbell or her Shallan Davar Campbell.

What's on your list?