Daughter came home with a note from the workshop yesterday. She had been treated for a sore ankle. I looked at her ankle and probed it. She never gave any indication of pain, and she isn't limping.
Her ankle is fine. Her heart is hurting. She knows Granddad is dying. She can't express those feelings verbally at the workshop, so she complains of a sore ankle. It gets her attention and sympathy, without the risk of her sadness giving way to tears.
She hasn't complained of her to me. She knows that I share her heart pain and understand it. She knows that I will give her a hug and listen to her fears. She also knows that I won't buy the ankle pain, I'll make her face the heart pain.
I cooked breakfast today. I made French toast. Every Saturday Dad got up and made us a big breakfast. We never knew what it would be, but we knew that when it was almost ready he'd go through the house taunting us. "There's nothing I hate more than to fix breakfast and have nobody here to eat it." "If I'm up, everyone should be up!" We'd drag ourselves out of bed and feast on pancakes, or waffles, or scrambled eggs with the works, sausage gravy and biscuits, chipped beef on cornbread, or who knows what else. It was the one morning a week that we set aside the cereal for a big breakfast. We will celebrate Dad's life when we eat on breakfast on Saturday morning.
I'm going to have to make some sausage gravy when we get back home after the wedding. That was Daughter's favorite, and Dad always made it for her when we came to visit. It was very unhealthy, and it totally messed up her blood sugar, and we didn't care. It was Granddad's way of telling Daughter he loved her.
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