Flashback Wednesday

No.  It's not a meme.  Just my Wednesday.  Everything I did today sent me back to another time and place.

Tonight while I was helping Aaron with his homework, we were both lying in my bed.  His head was resting on my stomach while I quizzed him on his spelling words.  Suddenly I was in the basement bar of a pizza restaurant in Eagle Rock, California having regular contractions and telling John he would have to cancel his CPR class  scheduled for the next day...he now had other plans.  Remembering all of the emotions of that evening, I was suddenly tearing up, asking Aaron to spell "blind."  As I looked at his soft blond head, it was hard to believe that my biggest boy had once lived inside me, getting ready to emerge into this crazy new world.

For dinner I was desperate, so I pulled out some Olive Garden spaghetti that has probably been frozen for three months.  A generous friend from High School, who heard about Andrew (who I hadn't seen in 10 years) brought it to my house along with four other full plates, breadsticks, and salad. It was so much food it has taken a while to get through it all.  How did I make it through those first few weeks of hell?  I was completely numb and in shock.

Later as I was doing the dishes, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" came on my ipod.  I thought back to my teenage years when I was so depressed and socially awkward I could hardly stand myself.  And then I remembered the time when I was a social worker working in Riverside, California, checking in on three Vietnemese children in their Filipino foster home.  The foster mother was out running errands so I had to "deal" with the foster father whom I had never met before.  Somehow, between "how are you? my name is Julie" and "goodbye, I'll see you next week," I sang the whole Simon and Garfunkel tune with the aid of his Karaoke machine. Without my knowledge, he recorded it.  And played it back to every subsequent social worker who ever stepped foot into his home.  And I was their supervisor and supposed to be more professional and stuff.  OH MY. 

While I was pouring myself a Baileys over ice, the David Crowder band came on and suddenly I was transported back to Houston in the radiation waiting room, reading books, talking to (yelling at) God, wondering how in the hell this had happened to my sweet boy, and trying to keep myself from falling to the floor in convulsant sobs. 
So while uneventful, it has been an emotional evening.  I've been back and forth through so many places tonight.

But I think, overall, the lesson to take away from my night of reminiscing is: NEVER sing Karaoke while on the job...even if the other guy sings two Elvis songs first, to break the ice.  Ahhh!  :)