Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I'll Have the Pancakes With a Side of Tissues

Yesterday, Mom and Beth accompanied me on my trek to Canton to buy a new computer monitor (so that I can return it tomorrow with Dad so he won't be wise to the fact that I can't return the original one I bought him a few months ago).

Of course, no shopping trip is complete without going out to eat for lunch. Our favorite place lately seems to be IHOP because they have scrumptious breakfasts all day.

As we sat down, Beth asked her grandma to explain a comment she had made earlier in the day where she said "I ran for you once."

Mom starts off by saying, "Well, for years and years, I couldn't even talk about this without crying, but..."

And that's as far as she got. She turned into a weeping, laughing, blubbering mess. The more she laughed about crying, the more the tears flowed.

Meanwhile, Beth and I are laughing at Mom's apparent inability to stop crying due to the retelling of a distant memory. Then, I started to cry just watching Mom cry.

So, what caused the sudden Weep-fest?

Mom was trying to tell Beth the story about how when Beth was two weeks old, I had to call her at work to tell her that Beth (who was a teeny preemie at the time) had suddenly taken a turn for the worse and they were rushing her from Aultman Hospital up to Akron Children's Hospital for immediate surgery.

Apparently, Mom answered the phone near her station at work (she was a basketmaker for Longaberger Baskets) and I could barely talk at the time because I was crying so hard. I finally explained the pertinent info and Mom hung up the phone and looked at her supervisor and said, "BYE!" and took off running. (Thus, the "I ran for you" topic of this story.) She didn't clean up her work station, she didn't say what was wrong, she just ran to the car. By the time she made it, she could barely breathe.

Then, she had to get to the hospital. She said she made the 20-minute trip in less than 10 minutes and was actually HOPING to get stopped by a cop so she could get a police escort. God help any officer who wouldn't escort her, I think she would have run him over at that point.

In the end, obviously everything turned out fine. But even knowing that the story had a happy ending couldn't stop the tears.

When we left the restaurant, the waitress finally came up to me and asked if everything was okay because she couldn't tell if we were laughing or crying. That would be both.

3 comments:

  1. Ach, DiAnne! The first paragraph almost made me fall off my chair from laughing so hard.

    You goils are nuts. My kind of nuts!

    I ran for wasps, once. Ran FROM them, anyway. And, er, I thought I was running, but Ken said it just looked like I was running in slow motion.

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  2. Well, I'll have you know that yesterday, for the very first time in 17 1/2 years, I told that same story to my friend Marilyn and never shed a tear.

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  3. I know this must be a news flash to all of you... but ... I'M ALIVE! No need for tears. :)

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