Silver Linings

My son's favorite saying is "Where there are black clouds, there are silver linings." It is a line from a Dream Theater song. What a great way to look at life. It's not always easy to see life this way, but I'm going to try right here to do it.

Let me start with my last posting. Sweet Stephanie passed away. I suppose the silver lining there is that she is in a better place, probably looking down and feeling sorry for us lowly earthlings. And her sweet son is living the ultimate three-year-old boy life. He lives out in the country, catching bugs and going fishing. He lives with his Granny and Paw Paw. He has starting sleeping in his underwear -- "Cause that's what Paw Paw does." Everytime I see him he has a smile on his face.

So after that, my husband got diagnosed with colon cancer. Here I am, four kids, two cats, a dog, a chinchilla, and a snake, thinking of how terrified I am of the "C word" in my wonderful young husband. Okay, silver lining. My husband went in early! They caught the cancer in its early stages and they were able to surgically remove it all -- no chemo necessary. Not only that, but my husband got a nice long vacation with his very own personal nurse (yours truly) waiting on him hand and foot.

We had scheduled a family vacation to South Padre Island to visit relatives and play on the beach. We got my husband's diagnosis within a week of our departure date. We decided to just go. Life is too short (don't we know it!). The old mini van with over 100,000 miles on it was making this high-pitched squealing sound (and I was pretty sure that no one had hidden a baby pig in the car -- it was a possibility). I decided to take it in to get it fixed before embarking on the ten hour drive to south Texas. Lo and behold -- the squeal was a fan belt, but the bigger problem was the leaking water pump. Eeek! So thousands of dollars later, the squeal is gone. Silver lining? We got our car fixed before we broke down on the lonely stretch of nothingness (except for hungry vultures) between Kingsville and Harlingen. And there wasn't a pig living in the trunk of my car.

Okay, so we have the van loaded up and ready to leave for the beach when my son comes downstairs and says (in that oh-so-sweet teenage way), "Who used all the hot water?" Grrr. Well, no one had used all the hot water. All the hot water was slowly leaking out of our water heater and onto the garage floor. We didn't have time to worry about this -- we had a beach waiting for us! So we turned off the water heater and left, saving the thousand dollar water heater replacement for when we got back. Silver lining? We caught it before we left. Coming home to a flooded garage and a million dollar water bill would have been a really dark cloud. The silver lining might have been pretty difficult to find there.

We had a wonderful time on the beach -- beautiful weather, good food, fun times with family. That is, beautiful weather until Hurricane Alex hit. We were staying on the tenth floor of a condo and we could feel the building swaying with the hurricane's force. We got up early on the day we were planning to leave and high-tailed it out of there, getting soaked all the way down to our newly-fixed car. We drove across the only bridge connecting the island with the mainland, the rain coming down like a river on our windshield and the wind threatening to whisk our van off of the narrow road. Silver lining? The city closed the bridge shortly after we left -- we would have been stranded on the island. And the other silver lining was that I got to be in the middle of a hurricane!! How fun was that? Yes, I'm one of those crazy people who goes outside to look for the tornado when the sirens go off instead of hiding in the bathtub. Maybe I could have my own storm chasing show -- "Blog in the Blender." Nah.

So see? It's not so hard to find those silver linings in the dark clouds. I could tell you even more stories, but I'll leave you with this encouraging thought: due to my husband's illness and an unfortunate turn of scheduling (I was supposed to work on my second favorite holiday -- Halloween!), I have retired from my job and I will be a fulltime caretaker of the zoo (we're getting another kitten!) and writer. I can tell you're bowled over with delight. Keep looking for those silver linings, my friends!