If you are just joining this blog, you might want to start at the preface and work your way up or you'll be missing major details :-)
The recap (Cliff's Notes style):
-Dad was put in jail for scamming a contracting job.
-Crack whore calls mom when Dad is in jail, who is in a hotel nearby waiting for my dearest Daddy.
-Dad's friend Julian bails him out of jail.
-Dad stocks the pantry with Y2K food and leaves on the road with the crack whore.
-Dad is missing for more than a week, during which we discover he has been caught with prostitutes previously.
-Get a call from Dad saying he's in a coma, but he won't give the phone to any personnel at the hospital- which on further inspection looks to be a rehab or mental health facility.
We sat down for dinner, while my precious Noah played. Everything was quiet except the little mumbo jumbo coming out of Noah's mouth. I don't know that we had much to say, or maybe it was that we had too much to say and didn't know where to start. My brother and sister witnessed the entire phone call with my dad, allegedly in a coma. They were worried, confused, shocked, and looked all too adult sitting there. But we did what normal humans do and carried on with our normal habits. We ate our dinner.
Its funny how when we don't know what to do with ourselves, we merely carry on with the flow of daily activity. Its as if the part of the brain that controls emotion can retreat to some dark alley and process but demand that the body continues. Keep eating, keep cleaning, keep on doing. But as we sat there moving and doing, we were all peeling away layers of the past and fitting the jig saw pieces together, starting with the edges.
The room was thick with anxiety and dread, as we put bite after bite in our mouths. A quick glance at my mom, told me she was holding back a flood of raw emotion. She's a quick one, and I'm sure she had fit more puzzle pieces together than the rest of us had. Aftershocks of tears threatened to slip out of her eyelids betraying her resolve to hold strong for her children. She had so much there on her face: fear, anger, pain, and a hint of hopelessness.
We could all feel it, the change that was about to take place. Something big was on the horizon and it wasn't good. We had all experienced little tremors of the shift taking place, but this wasn't just a tremor, this was the real deal. Our lives were about to be shattered into a million tiny pieces, and we still didn't quite know why, let alone how to fix it. But there we were- a switch and been flipped and our life trajectory permanently altered. Our happy life with jovial old Preacher Tim was over and the life-quake was trying its best to take us down.
In the background, the radio was playing, filling the suffocating silence. A song came on I hadn't heard in a very long time. This may be the cheesiest moment in our lives or the most miraculous one. Its hard to tell. Either way, its what we needed. God can be funny, I'll tell you.
Good old Bon Jovi to the rescue. Livin' On a Prayer. I swear, this is absolutely not made up at all. The perfect song came on at the perfect time. If you have the song, pause reading this right now. Go start the song, and continue reading. I'm serious. Do it now...I'll wait.
My foot started to tap as Bon Jovi tiptoed sneakily into my head. My sister voice came out as a whisper and my brother started tapping his fork to the catchy beat. Mom start to hum the tune mindlessly.
We gotta hold on to what we've got/ cause it doesn't make a difference /if we make it or not/ We got each-other and a lot / for love- well give it a shot.
And then as if we had practiced it, we all belted out at the top of our lungs in unison. I'm telling you, it was a real movie moment. You can't write stuff this cheesy.
Whooah we're halfway there/Ooohhh Livin' on a prayer/ take my hand and we'll make it I swear/ Whooah Living on a prayer.
I jumped up from my chair and sang relentlessly into my microphone fork (and I don't usually sing...EVER). My brother followed suit and played his air guitar with nimble fingers wearing that scrunched "rock face" you see from most guitarists. My sister sang into her fork microphone which magically turned to a drum stick when necessary. Mom sang and smiled at us- her three children unintentionally telling her we would make it after all, if only on the grace of a prayer. Together we'd make it.
In this moment we told her that we didn't loose everything. We didn't loose our spunk- the spunk she had given us over the years. The same spunk she had had shown us how to use well and often. We danced and showed her we wouldn't give up the fight- that we still had fight left in us. We sang and told her that even in the hardest times we would find moments to bond, to laugh and to just be okay. We were going to live on what little we were about to have- each other and a prayer. A prayer to survive. A prayer to keep afloat and not let this ruin us. And it would be on the heels of this prayer that we would stay for some time. We would pray and we would continuously be showered with grace and love...
And then I got the text from my husband who was on his way to the house to celebrate what we thought was to be a very sad thin Christmas.
Come outside
"Daddy is here Noah! Lets go get him!"
Noah sprung up and bolted to the door bursting with excitement. I opened the door, and there it was. Our car stuffed full (and I mean top to bottom) with wrapped gifts. Gifts for my brother and sister. Gifts for my Mom. Gifts for the whole family. Gifts for the family drowning in a mess of tragic chaos. Gifts for the forgotten. Only we weren't forgotten.
"Presents! Mommy presents. Daddy presents!"
Santa Came after all. It wasn't the white bearded Santa this year though. This Santa came from the hearts of kind friends that wouldn't let this Christmas be one of broken promises and empty hearts. It was in this moment when my brother, sister, and mom realized that hope wasn't gone after all. These gifts came from an unlikely source, but it still came. This Christmas we would ALL have gifts. It was not the miserable dollar store Christmas we all thought it would be. And we got amazing things. Not just re-gifted crap that people like to give as "charity". My friends went above and beyond. They shopped- really shopped for everyone. They cared- really cared. They cared for people they didn't really know, and gave us the ultimate gift of all. The gift of hope.
The kids were more excited this Christmas than I had ever seen. More excited than the days of Santa being real, because what they had now was hope. Hope we would be okay. Hope we would get and receive help. Hope that we would make it through what was about to come. God help us, with a couple good friends and Bon Jovi we might just be okay after all.
