When crisis hits close to home, it often gets too busy for reflection. (This is me explaining the break in my almost daily posting)

My aunt (Mom's big sister) suffered a stroke last weekend while on vacay in Florida. Her daughters shot into action, taking the first flight down, leaving behind two spouses and three kids at home to hold down the fort in their absences. Two nights later, all the cousins came together to discuss ongoing care for our 99 year old grandmother, who has been living and cared for in Ninang's* home, thankfully for me, just down the street from me.

There is a switch that involuntarily gets flicked during a crisis. For the life of me, I can never finish a full laundry cycle in one day (in fact, I am typing instead of sorting at this very moment), but when something reeeeally needs to get done, somehow we find a way. When Big Boy was fifteen months old, a bacterial infection brought on a febrile seizure. It was 2am, when not many of us are very useful to anybody, but that switch flipped, I quickly stopped freaking out and became very calculated in figuring out what to do (try to wake and cool off Big Boy, wake Hubby, call 911, follow the instructions, try not to wake the other two kiddies, etc.). It really was involuntary; I didn't notice until HubbyMom shared her observations with me in the weeks that followed.

Ninang remains in Florida, and the journey back home, let alone the road to recovery, will be a long one that will be a test of patience and faith. The family is backed by an excellent support system of family and friends; they need never feel alone.

Change is inevitable; it's something we must teach ourselves to embrace, through trust. The dynamic of our family is already changing, but this change is also including an even tighter closeness than we already had. So, Christmas might have to be held at someone else's house this year, but perhaps this is the year we were meant to start new traditions.


*"Ninang" = Godmother...while she is technically the godmother of only one or two of the eleven nieces/nephew in our family, we all adopted that title for her, and on a more personal level, has been one of a small collection of women who cared for us as her own when Mom passed away in '88.