Home Alone

11:20 a.m. Tab just left to scout out the location of a church where he will be photographing an ordination ceremony next month, and he took the boys out with him. I shouldn't be writing this now because I need to get to work on the sample pages for Kashani (my next Press assignment), but I just wanted to comment on how wonderfully quiet the house is. Being alone never bothered me. If anything, solitude nourishes me in some small but vital way. It is like a trace mineral or some other micro-nutrient that my body needs regularly: I can exist without it for days and even months, but the lack of quiet time by myself gradually depletes my emotional and mental health. With no one else in the house, all of this shared space is mine alone; with no one needing my attention, my time is mine to spend how I please.

2:45 p.m. Tab and the boys returned at 1. Matthew had a goose-egg sized bump on his forehead due to a tumble down the church's front steps. The incident made Tab realize that the first-aid kit in the car is inadequate to meet the exigencies created by three very active small boys. He stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home and purchased a larger one. We now have a fully-stocked kit, which includes supplies for dealing with everything from minor cuts and scrapes to gashes, from bee stings to snake bites. One of the neatest things in it is an emergency ice pack. You follow the directions to activate it, and voila: instant ice. Knowing our sons' tendencies to fall, trip, tumble, and otherwise bang up their heads and other parts of their anatomy, Tab wisely picked up several of these items.

8:20 p.m. I called Rita tonight to find out how Nana is feeling and found out Nana is back in the hospital. The doctor wants to do an echocardiogram because she has been having chest pain. Rita said she is resting comfortably there, and my uncle Jimmy is staying with her tonight until she falls asleep. Rita also told me she has assured Nana that she won't be going into a rehab center after her stay in the hospital but will come directly home. I hope Nana won't have to be there long; it seems she always comes out of the hospital in worse shape than when she went in.

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