Lola (Second Try) because yesterday it didn't show up in the blog

Monday, March 2, 2009

It's Lola's birthday. Lola my mother and Lola my daughter.

Lola Nelson Brimley, born 1899; Lola Schiess Scaggs, born 1968 and named for her grandma. I call this a good day.

Lola, my daughter, is a wonderful girl (okay, woman), and so was my mother. Both pianists, both bright and good. I mean good, as in just good people. Both natural born teachers. Both a favorite among people who know them.

My mother was a small bundle of talent and energy and opinion, standing 4'9". Lola is taller at 5'6" and thinner but with no less talent. I don't know that I'd call her opinionated, but I know that from her dad she inherited the gift for figuring things out. Which makes me think of . . .

2/23/03 Sunday

The day has had its moments. Lola punctured her hand with the Phillips head tip of a drill. She called in tears. It hurt—a deep wound—and it frightened her. If Dad were here, she said, I could just ask him to come over and look at it and he would know what to do.

It’s true. But I went. She had washed it and bled it and poured hydrogen peroxide in it. Those were all the right things to do. Then we tried to know if she should get a tetanus shot. Ask-a-nurse says yes. Jeff says no. I’m inclined to agree with him because Lola is nursing the baby and doesn’t know what effect the shot might have on him. I worry, of course, because I’m her mother and do not want her to take any chances. If Wayne were here, he would know.

Six years ago. It was a nasty puncture. It hurt me to see it. And I know that her dad's death the month before made the wound seem worse, more painful, more frightening. If there were lines between the injury and the sadness we were feeling already, they got blurred. It was just a sad little drama that day in the living room of her house.

We made a shaky decision, trying to look beyond our worry and the what ifs we had spoken of. No tetanus shot. It turned out well. Lola has a mark in that web between the thumb and first finger, but she suffered no permanent ill effects of the injury.

This is The Widow's Chronicle, after all, and there is nothing in my life that is not part of it.