Kintropy In Action

It's 3:00 a.m..  The phone is ringing, incessently.   The kids are peacefully asleep in their beds.  Mom anxiously works her way through their rooms, verifying they are safely tucked in, undisturbed.  The world is in crisis, waking someone in the White House who must respond –

Really?  Mom's making the rounds because Something In The World Is Happening (isn't it always)?

It's much simplier here at our house.  About an hour earlier, it's not the phone ringing that wakes me; it's the buzzing alarm.  Time to swap nursing shifts with Janette.  Soon after, Janette is yawning medicines given and when-kids-fell-asleep times into my waking brain.  As she heads to bed, I am verifying that g-tubes are not leaking formula into the bed, clearing the humidifier line of excess water, and making sure Hannah's trach is securely in place.  I'm walking across the hall to Gabriel's room, rewrapping him in the blankets he's managed to kick away, lulling him back to sleep.

Sure, in an hour, a hypothetical call might route from some distant country into the President's House.  He's got staff to handle that, though, doesn't he?  And the next President will do, too, regardless of who he or she is.

I would feel safer, in fact, if the President were picking up the phone, rather than waiting for it to ring.  Maybe he or she would call in advisers, leader of Congress, and develop and implement universal access to quality health care, a reassessment of military missions and expenditures in lives and money, a progressive and sustainable tax and welfare system.

I know.  I'm dreaming a bit myself right now, aren't I. 

But I imagine 3 a.m. Commerical Mom might agree with me.  She didn't get a 3 a.m. call:  not really.  She and Hubby had sat at the dinner table that night, after putting the kids to bed, discussing the Basics:  jobs, grocery and gasoline costs, house payments, a school report card, medical bills.  All of that had stirred around her subconscious, producing a big, heart-pounding nightmare.

She made the rounds to verify that The Big Bad Nightmare was just that.  The kids were safe.  The house was intact.  She and Hubby still had jobs.  No medical, debt, or other crisis had chewed up her loved ones.  Not yet, anyway.  She could tip-toe back down the hallway and crawl back into bed.  Tomorrow would be another day.

-- Dad