Sometimes Things Don't Turn Out As They Should

Last year my son built me a beautiful greenhouse. It keeps my plants warm in winter and by summer I had envisioned it turning into a veritable Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But this year my tomatoes won’t grow. I’ve put them in fertile soil, watered them, weeded them, sang to them, but they are withering and dying. Not at all what I expected. But then things don’t always happen as we anticipate.

As we approached Mothers’ Day weekend, friends began to call asking if we were having another picnic as we have in the past. But I have been opting out of the annual picnic after the unforgettable one on Mothers’ Day 2 years ago.

Bunches of family and friends were gathered in my yard, sitting in the pleasant May weather, and eating my mom’s meatballs and my chewy Cheetos. My friends were at the table with me relaying past events with the Johnsons’ and commenting on what a pleasant, yet uneventful, day it had been.

Then we heard the holler and one of the men came racing up the hill, calling for me, and asking if I still had my husband’s old crutches. While my son sprinted for the crutches, I ran down the hill to find my husband lying in the grass with a broken thigh.

Now broken thighs are nothing simple. 911 was called, women were crying, all my son’s friends rushed over to stare, one friend was taking photos, police sirens were howling, and firemen with stretchers were barreling into the yard. As the firemen were loading my husband onto the stretcher, our photo taking friend was rushing home to post them on MySpace. The rest of the world could now view another day at the Johnsons’.

After an injection of morphine, my husband was in quite a good mood and lavished compliments on the firemen as to what wonderful people they were, how good they were at their jobs, how kind they were to stop by, and what a snazzy, big red truck they were driving.

I was placed in the front of the fire truck and got strapped into the springy front seat while the second fireman rode in the back with my husband. Waving goodbye to my guests, I felt very important riding shotgun in the front seat like a real, live fireman. I asked if I could press the button for the ladder. The fireman told me "No".

After pulling onto Shed Road, the truck came to a stop. The fireman told me they had to give my grinning husband more drugs because he was jostling. I mentioned that I was getting jostled quite a bit too, could I maybe have a beer. Again, he told me "No". I had to sit still and don’t touch.

The next morning my husband was wheeled away by a suspiciously, super-self-confident doctor to put his leg back on his hip. Upon his return, I noticed his foot was turned out at a very odd angle. We commented on how successful Charlie Chaplin had been with feet like that. We told him how easily he could now run in circles. We told him that from now on when hiking a compass would probably be wise.

Calling the doctor back I pointed out my husband’s westward leaning digits. Hemming and hawing the super-self-confident doctor mentioned how hard it is to see in surgery because of all the blood, how sometimes thighbones are hard to figure out, and how Oprah had been interviewing 800 pound, psychopathic, conjoined twins while he was operating.

I told him though understandably distracted, he had put my husband’s leg on backwards. He explained backwards was a bit strong, it was more like sideways. He told me he would wheel him back in and put his leg on frontways. And I was to trust the same thighbone challenged guy that put it on leaning left to now set it to right.

But now 2 years later another Mothers’ Day rolls around and my husband is back fiddling around the yard while I’m mourning my dead plants. And it just shows me once again, that no matter how well you prepare, and no matter what you expect, sometimes things just don’t go as they should. All we can do is lift up our chins and keep plodding along because nothing in life is certain. Not red plump tomatoes, or a doctor putting a foot back on facing the front.