Chapter 46

It’s Sunday morning. Graduation and the wedding are past, and Rob and Kaitlyn are too busy to talk right now, so here’s Laurel:

You’ve heard the expression, ‘It was all a blur’? Yes, I know, cliché, but there’s a reason that phrases become clichés – they are sometimes the only thing that describes the situation!

We dropped Mom and Krista off last, and Kay and I broke a couple of speed limits getting home ourselves, just in time to shower, change, grab a sandwich and something to drink, and jump into the truck with Rob and Jake, to head for the Field House. Met the rest of the crew there, and Renee joined me and Kay in a mad dash to the assembly rooms to get ready for the processional.

We got into our robes, got final instructions, found our places and got quiet, just as someone hollered something about somebody gone for lunch. Really! Gone for lunch? Well, that’s what it sounded like, and I thought oh no, now we gotta wait for soup and sammies?

My bad!

But who knew? I’d never heard the word before! You know those flags they carry at the front of the procession? They’re called gonfalons. Don’t ask. Yes, I looked it up afterwards on my phone. It’s spelled like it sounds, too. And gonfaloniers are the people that carry them.

I started giggling, and somebody else did too, and someone tried to shush us, but we were all giggling by then because somebody heard me whisper to the person beside me about gone for lunch, and it rippled all the way back to Kay, before we got quiet again. The monitors were having a fit!

Anyway, the gonfaloniers hoisted their gonfalons (hee hee) and we got ready to start filing out the doors. It was mass confusion all the way to the door! But we got straightened out there, somehow, and as we passed the two professors in charge of the procession I heard one of them muttering, “Every freakin’ year! Next year we’re just calling them flag bearers!”

So, we got inside the field house door, and there were the chairs ahead of us, and the platform with all the dignitaries, and it dawned on me that this was the day I was sure would never happen for me! By rights, I shouldn’t even be here! I almost wasn’t. I almost didn’t make it. Except for Kay and Rob! And all the rest of them! And then I couldn’t see very well any more, and almost tripped and fell, and I grabbed the girl walking next to me and she helped me catch my balance until I was steady again. And we kept walking, and everything was okay again, until I looked up again and there was Jake, smiling, next to his dad and mom, and Rob and his family waving at, wait, Kay is farther back in line, so who ... And there was Kay’s mom and dad, and Krista too, and they ... were ... waving ... at ... meee!

This time the girl next to me, Megan, and the guy behind me, actually grabbed my arms so I wouldn’t fall down! He thought I’d been drinking, at first, but Megan looked back and said that I was just emotional. So we got there and made it to our chairs, and I didn’t dare look around again.

Later I found out that George, and Suzy and Richelle were behind the Sandersons, and they were crying happy tears, too. Glad I didn’t see that then!

Anyway, we all marched in there, and waited for the “Take your seats” command. Got sat down, and the commencement commenced. Of course, everything was new to me. I’d skipped my own high school graduation and never saw one of these before, and I hadn’t really paid too much attention to what they’d said about this one, so I didn’t expect it would take as long as it did. And I had to pee!

Belinda’s turn!

I know, I know, “Oh ye of little faith!” But I can hear the smile in His voice when He says it.

Why am I so surprised that I’m seeing what I never thought that I would see with my own eyes? But I am! Thank You! Every time I replay it in my mind it gets better. Thank You! Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!

What a week! At least the past few days of it. We got here and relaxed for a while, adopted a few more daughters, then The Shopping Trip to end all shopping trips! Picking and joking and loving with all of them, just like a family should, then noise and a bump, and the lights went out, and I woke up, and someone was screaming. And there was a fuzzy light, and then a black face I hadn’t seen before, but I knew her, and she was holding me in her arms and crying over me, and calling me Mom. Then I could vaguely see another face, and I heard her voice and knew it was Krista. My little girl! But where was Kaitlyn?

Then a man’s voice. I couldn’t see him, but I recognized it – Rob! And I must have lost consciousness again, because I woke up in an ambulance, and then in the hospital. My head hurt, then didn’t hurt, and it kept coming and going, and those fuzzy flashes of light, but the fuzziness started clearing up, and it was the strangest thing – and it suddenly hit me - I was seeing things around me. I was really seeing them!

The doctors kept coming in and checking me over, telling me that everything was going to be okay, but they kept looking at my eyes, and then covering them up again, and calling for another doctor, Doctor Mullins, stat. He finally got there and examined me. Harland had told them that I had lost my sight years ago in a fall off a horse, but he didn’t realize that I had now regained it, through another bump on the head.

Doctor Mullins said that he had never seen this himself, but he had read about trauma-induced blindness being reversed. There weren’t too many guidelines for it, and he wanted to proceed with caution, so he said that my eyes should be bandaged for a few days to protect them, and told the nurse to do that.

I said, “No way! Not until I see the daughters I’d never yet seen! Including the latest ones, and my soon-to-be son-in-law, and everyone else in my world!” He relented, on the condition that I would rest my eyes as much as possible.

Harland and the girls came in first, and I got to see and hug my beautiful babies! Thank you Lord! And that big lug still needs a haircut! Then Kaitlyn went back out and brought in her guy, and I got to meet my new son-in-law!

Then someone else at the door, and there was the face I’d first seen at the accident. She came over to the bed, looked a little scared, until I reached out to her and said, “Hi Richelle! Honey, if it’s all the same to you, next time I will drive!” Got a cross between a sob and a chuckle, then a sweet, fierce hug, and I got the feeling that she didn’t want to let go. Then I got another hug from Suzy.

Then a little commotion at the door, and this great big soldier-looking guy maneuvered a wheelchair into the room, and up to the bed, and a shy voice said, “Hi Mom.”

Know what? I love them all!

Doctor Mullins came back in and said that would be all I could stand for today, that I should really get some rest and to rest my eyes especially. I said okay, I’d relax, and read for a while. He started to protest again, and I held up my iPOD and smiled, “Like I’ve been reading for years!” He just grinned and shook his head.

Anyway, I stayed overnight, and then got out in time to help with some last minute errands, and then, graduation.

And tomorrow? The day every mom looks forward to, from the day her daughters are born!

Wonder what George is thinking?

How did I get into this? No way I ever was good enough to deserve anything like this! From a quiet meal in a Thai restaurant on a Tuesday evening, to being Best Man for a young fella I’ve only known a few weeks!

I was resigned to the fact that I’d lost my own family for whatever reason, and that hurt, but I’d be damned if I let it turn me into a bitter, lonely old man, so I still tried to stay active after I retired. Didn’t stay home to rot, but went out for dinner, movies, and stuff like that, especially where I could see the college kids around me, and try to imagine what kinds of family lives they had. Then there were a couple of unfinished things from work that I just couldn’t let go of.