THANK YOU!

This is a big thank you.  Through all our trials and tribulations you have called and emailed to offer your emotional support and encouragement and sometimes much more.  It means a great deal to both of us.  In my professional capacity as a lawyer, I get to see families at their worst; some have more than a passing resemblance to our background and social setting, but somehow they just turned out very differently than we did.  We have many many things to thank Mom and Pop for, but I think this sense of being centered and cohesive is the best.  It's all the more remarkable considering their own fractured, perhaps even Gothic, family histories.  But thank you so much for all the calls and emails and other help.

Janet is certainly on the mend and making very good progress and working very hard at it.  Her doctor was rather surprised that she went back to work so quickly, since apparently most people just stay home.  She is now helping out with many of the chores, and we (I?) are looking forward to more of that.

My overwhelming sense of the whole episode is one of a big blank space in our lives.  All the things that we could normally do we couldn't.  No matter how "accessible" some place might be, the accommodations are usually second rate and it takes longer to get to them.  So you're just forced to stay at home.  I don't mean that there haven't been many positives, because there have been (see first and second paragraphs), but you just have to forego or put on hold so many things.  The effective loss of my law partner since July and still ongoing hasn't helped at all, and his sense of doom and depression about his situation is a pretty strong contrast to Janet's grit.

In the midst of all this, or actually towards the end, we got Sandied.  That upsets things, too: if we have no power, we have nothing: no heat, water, hot water, very limited septic (a pump pushes stuff out to the septic field), and (for me) worst of all, no television or internet.  That really hurts for news junkies like me, and it was interesting to learn that this is what I missed the most.  Mom and Pop's old generator powered our sump pump and fridge, and a lamp or two and the microwave when we needed it, and I did buy a very small capacity heater the last day we had no power and it could operate as well.  So it's an old machine and drinks about five or more gallons of gas a day, but it works.  The sense of disruption is complete: I had to spend three hours one day just to get more gas for the generator (it actually went out while I was gone).  Still today there are roads closed, so you never know if you can get where you're going.  Lots of stores were closed for a long time, courts were closed all week, schools were closed,   We didn't get hammered anywhere near as badly as many, many others, but boy, I do not ever want to go through this again.

It's been a time of reflection.  I've learned I still fall very short in the patience department, and I'd better get that fixed for the years to come.  But I've also appreciated how much we all care about each other.  That wasn't in any doubt, but it helped us get through it all.