Home again

Bill's back on Becker Road! It's a beautiful time of year in my hometown, like many other places. So I'm glad he's out of the hospital, able to look out the window at his trees.

Linda said Dad's discharge papers did list him as having a seizure, which would explain his fall and black eye. But I guess the primary problem was a seizure medication that has been giving him an array of ugly side affects. So docs decided to wean him off Vimpat and replace that with another seizure medication. Dad will be on seizure meds for the rest of his life. Seizures are one of the worst side affects of this kind of cancer. You just have to learn to control them if possible, and live with it.

Talked to Dad this morning, and he was cheerful, cracking jokes. Aunt Donna was there with him because a physical therapist was scheduled to stop by and assess household risks, such as stairs. So Dad was on the phone with me making jokes about Donna. They've known each other for about 40 years, so ribbing back and forth is totally acceptable.

"Yeah, Donna's here. She's gotta take care of me. Make sure I'm alive."

(Donna laughing in the background.)

"She's wearing a short skirt and looks real sexy!"

"Oh, Bill!" (More laughing from Aunt D.)

I got to talk to Aunt D. on the phone, too. She was like a second mother to me growing up. I had a few second families since we lived within 10 miles of 10 aunts and uncles (and a haywagon load of cousins). Heather and I grew up crossing fields to get to relatives' houses for play or food or just to join my mom, who'd drink gallons of coffee with her family each week.

Aunt Donna, especially, was a mother hen and took good care of all us crazy cousins. She kept us fed and kept us in line. She also had some terrific Halloween parties. Donna and Bill (and their kids Jason and Molly) lived in an old farmhouse built in the 1860s. Aunt Donna and Uncle Bill still live there, and Uncle Bill farms with Uncle Jim. The farmhouse is beautiful. Aunt D. has spent years going over every corner with polish, adding antique furniture, re-doing floors, hanging old spoons and utensils on the kitchen walls. I love that house. But when we were kids, we were all infatuated with and fearful of the cellar. It was a cellar, not a basement. Low ceilings, dirt floor, stone walls -- and dark. So Aunt D. invited us for Halloween parties in that cellar, where we witches and ghosties bobbed for apples and scared ourselves silly, and Uncle Bill would take us for hayrides.

This time of year it's fun to think about those parties, about mom raking acres of leaves, about Dad doing the final grass mowing, about those vibrant reds and purples and yellows and oranges in the woods where we grew up. I'm glad Dad's there to keep enjoying it.