Spring house (blog?) cleaning part 1

(Note to all: the title of this will be made clearer after a brief inrtoduction.)

This was the view of my deck on Friday, April 1, 2011. I already had potatoes and peas ready to go in the garden after a string of nice spring days !!

Thanks, Mother Nature, for the April Fool's joke!

This was the view from the lanai on Saturday, April 2.

Who's laughing now??

Yes, we have gone from snow to sunshine in less than 24 hours! We are here on Maui for the next two weeks. One of the things I will be doing is reconnecting with everyone through my renewed blog. That way I will only tell stories once and not confuse (or bore) anyone by repetition.

When I began looking back at my blogging history (hence the "spring blog cleaning" title), I discovered a couple of blog drafts that I never got around to posting, so I am going to start there and finish them before catching up and moving on.

The following entry was begun on November 5, 2007, and was originally titled "FORTY YEARS AND COUNTING..."

I was thinking about bearing my testimony yesterday, but the time was well taken by those who were most touched by the two funerals. What I was feeling did not seem appropriate, but I did want to share it with my family. It was on November 4, 1967, that I was baptized and confirmed by my fiancee. We had been engaged only 3 weeks when the stake baptismal service was held. I was the only one over the age of 8 being baptized, so I was the only one confirmed that night. The blessing Ed gave me was to be a very important thing that I only understood after several years.

In the blessing, he said there would come a time when my family would rely on me to keep them together. I want to be sure that all of you know that blessing was fulfilled in July of 1971 when Dad had his industrial accident at Proctor & Gamble. Some of you may not know or may have forgotten the details of that event, but it is important that the record not be lost.

Dad was the supervisor of the production line for the new plant that was to make Pringles for the first time. He was working rotating shifts, two weeks on each, as the plant was under construction. We had lived in Jackson TN for just over a year. Eddie was 20 months old, and I was pregnant with Billy. That particular week Dad had begun graveyard shift, and as the YW President, I was babysitting the children of our Camp Director Ouida Williams while she went to camp. Her husband Tommy worked for Dad on graveyard, and was also a counselor in the Branch Presidency. At about 2 AM there was a terrific pounding on the backdoor, and I went down to find Tommy and President Etheridge on the porch. They explained that there had been an accident involving Dad at the plant. Tommy had been there, went in the ambulance with Dad, and had called James who met them at the hospital where they administered to Dad. They then came straight to our house so that Tommy could stay with Eddie and his own children while President Etheridge took me to the hospital.

Once we got there, I only had a few minutes with my precious husband before they put him in an ambulance to go to the Baptist Hospital in Memphis 80 miles away. I was not allowed to go with him, but that was a good thing, as it turned out. James took me out to the plant to get our little VW and followed me to the gas station and filled the car for me. I drove off into the night on Interstate 40 toward a frightening and uncertain future.

All through that trip thoughts kept swirling through my head--the Jackson doctor had said Ed was going to lose his hand, what was I going to do about Eddie, what was going to happen with my new job at the college, how long would Ed be hospitalized, how would we manage without his income, how and where would we have to move, and more that I can't remember--but there was darkness and fear all around me. Then a warm light flooded my mind and I heard myself say, "I can do this." I was reminded that I had received the blessing to hold my family together, and this was when I would do it. As I was driving alone to the hospital in Memphis, the peace and comfort from that promise made by my sweetheart at my confirmation kept me calm and stable.

I walked into the Emergency area, told the nurse who I was, and they immediately put me in a wheelchair and took my vitals. I guess I looked pretty scary, and they thought they were dealing with a pregnancy emergency. We straightened that out, and they took me to Ed's room. He was in the bed, still in his work whites, and looking as pale as the sheets. I remember how shocked I was by the way his hand looked propped up on top of several pillows, all lumpy and bloated out with floppy fingers--until I recognized I was looking at a latex glove filled with ice that was packed around and taped to a bandaged arm. Things got better after that.

He was crying and apologizing for being careless and destroying our future plans. I was calm and reassuring because I still carried the peaceful spirit from the blessing. The orthopedic specialist walked in overhearing his fears and immediately said, "You are not going to lose that hand. That's why I am here." They whisked him off to surgery, and the blessings continued.

After hours of surgery Ed was back with his hand cleaned up and repairs begun. By the end of that day I had learned that P&G had searched for the top hand specialist on the East coast, and this doctor was one of the two they found. We could not have been in a better place. At every stage after that from having Eddie cared for during the entire month I stayed on a couch in Ed's hospital room, through the skin grafts and the recovery and the further reconstructive surgeries and the gradual return to work, and the lemon of a VW bus, and the birth of Billy, and all of the other stuff that had to happen, through it all my blessing sustained me.

I know without any doubt that the confirmation blessing I had been given was inspired and has been fulfilled. I am so grateful for a husband who has always lived worthy to receive and pronounce blessings through his priesthood. I love him with all my heart.