I don't like to be in the middle of things...really, I don't.  I'm much happier being firmly on one side or the other.  Lately, though, I find my heart smack dab in the middle of two conflicting emotions.  Have you heard of the Sandwich Generation?  Well, for the last several months, I've pretty much been the bolonga on the sandwich, hanging out with tomato, the lettuce and the tomato between the bread that is my parents and my babies.  Before my father died, he was here in Pensacola for two months.  My mother stayed with my grandparents and I tried to help as best I could with meals and transportation.  Sometimes, sheduling was difficult between trying to be there for appointments with my dad and picking up Gracie for school or watching Abigail's preschool programs or getting both of them to ballet (and don't forget tyring to schedule photo sessions).  But, honestly, I think we all handled it fairly well...I guess as well as could be expected.  It was a very difficult time, but I don't think there was ever a time during that month that I really felt like I had to choose between what my parents needed and what my girls needed.

Since my father died, though, I've felt a lot more, well.....sandwiched.  My father died on Wednesday, December 30th.  That Friday, my sister and her family drove my mother back to Louisiana.  They left, headed back to their home in Tennessee, late Saturday afternoon.  Everything seemed okay....my mom was doing all right, glad to be back home in her own house and to be reunited with her dogs. 

By Monday night, my mother was in the ICU with double pneumonia.  I have never felt so conflicted in my life.  The 200 miles between my house and my mother's felt like the distance between the sun and the former planet Pluto.  I felt like I needed to go and be with my mother, but I needed to be here, too.  There's one disadvantage to being a stay-at-home mama at times like these...I don't really have anything to do with the girls when I need to leave.  If I was working, we could take advantage of extended day-care hours and Steve would have been able to handle getting them where they need to be.  Of course, if I was working, then I'd have to worry about taking off from work.  So really, there's no winning in that type of situation.  If Gracie were still in preschool, I would have just taken them both with me.  But, kindergarten is not preschool as I've learned the hard way.  She is already on probation for truancy (yeah, that's right, my KINDERGARTENER is a truant...I promise I'll share the details of that story in a later post )  so I have to be really (really, really, really) careful about why she misses school.  So, my heart was split, right down the middle....I couldn't leave my responsibilities here, but I felt like I needed to be with my mother.  Luckily, she was doing fine in the hospital and told both my sister (who's suffering from the same bologna-sandwich syndrome) and I that she was fine and we didn't need to come.

After more than two weeks in the hospital, my mother was finally released last week and I was worried about her being at home alone and still being so weak from the pneumonia.  Luckily, my aunt flew down to stay with her.  I've slept a lot better knowing that some who loves her is with her.

So, yeah, I'm part of sandwich, but I'm very thankful that I am.  I mean really, what would a piece of bologna be without the bread?  And luckily, my sandiwch comes with a lot of sides like soda and chips and potato salad in the form of my friends and my church and my husband and my sister and my brother and extended family that help make my sandwich feel not so lonely.  So, my plate is fulll...in more ways than one



And, a note from me:  I've struggled the last few weeks with how to continue writing my blog.  It seemed somewhat disrespectful to jump right from writing about my father's illness and death to the antics and craziness of my girls and my life.  I searched for a way to seque back into the normal state of this blog, but I just don't think there's a graceful way to do it. So, I'm  just going to do it.  I love my father very much and I miss him, probably more than I ever expected.  But, I think he, more than just about anyone, would appreciate me continuing to write and finding the humor in the world around me.