Supergran Returns

My mother, Supergran, with Riley

I have been sick. Really, really sick. The sickest I've been in modern history. Though I have no formal medical training, I have seen several episodes of "House." So I feel qualified in my self diagnosis of a new strain of tuberculosis-beri-beri-ebola-scurvy-beubonic-pneumonic-simple-chronic-halitosis. But rest easy, John Q. Public, because I definitively ruled out avian flu.

I was in fact so sick that my husband was staying home from work to watch Riley because I couldn't get out of bed. So I lit the bat signal to Texas. My mother, known to her grandkids as Gran (or Grrrrrrrrr, according to Riley), stepped into her phone booth, donned her cape and hopped on an airplane on a day's notice to fly faster than a speeding bullet to our outbreak hotzone. A couple of days after she arrived Riley got sick and my husband started wilting, so her Florence Nightingaleness tripled.

She did all the wonderful Mom/Gran things she always does when she comes. She cooked, cleaned, shopped and played with Riley simultaneously and nonstop. If only I hadn't felt like I was dying, it would've been a dream vacation. This time it really didn't bother me that my mothering/wifing doesn't measure up to hers. I was too busy benefiting from her manic multi-tasking to feel overshadowed and incompetent. OK, so her skinniness always has and always will make me self conscious, but this time I was too grateful to her to dwell on it. Much.