#30 Hope?

Some good news for a change - David got his SSI - and the same week he got a chance to fly to Florida with his uncle. The day of their flight I was paralyzed with fear - not of tragedy, but of hope. Isn't it funny how in life we can become acclimated to almost anything - I was accustomed to bad news, to trouble, to struggle - my mind could not wrap itself around the fact that something good was happening - and so my mind made up its own bad news - I was certain that this was some cruel twist in fate - tempting us into some ultimate disaster - the jet would crash - the jet would be hijacked - David would lose control from paranoia and be shot dead by the marshals like that man with bipolar disorder in the news a couple of months back. I tried, but I just could not make myself just be grateful for my son's good fortune - it was pouring that night and as I sat at my desk grading listening to the pounding rain - I thought back to how this had started after David's first attempt and how it rained for days - I couldn't help but think that if this was literature it would end the same - the rain - the floods - the phone call that the plane had went down. I had to shake myself and find something to distract me - I called my cousin to tell her the good news - but I just couldn't help but mention that it felt scary to have things go right. Then my husband called out from the mudroom in the back of the house - we have been patching our old roof for a couple of years and it wasn't unusual for a new leak to spring up, but this one was massive - a steady stream ran from the ceiling and the sheetrock had begun to bow - just as my husband turned to grab a bucket, a four foot wide section of the ceiling came crashing down - I laughed - perhaps an inappropriate reaction - but now I felt sure that the plane would land smoothly (which it did) - things had been going too well - but the hole in the ceiling begged normalcy - at least in our lives - the rain pouring into my house yelled hope!