The Little Details

I just crawled out of bed, and while I was grinding the coffee beans I was struck by a thought, and then really surprised that the thought I was struck by didn't strike me much sooner.

A little bit of backup story: My dad busted his leg up pretty bad recently and required surgery. His recovery requires him to have the leg elevated for 6 weeks and daily physical therapy, thus ruling out any possibility of my mom being able to care for him at home during this time. Once he was out of the hospital, he was sent to what is essentially a nursing home type facility, but they provide him with the medical care and physical therapy he needs.

I haven't been able to visit him yet. I was on tour, then when I got home my mom warned me not to come yet; a week spent in the hospital and she had picked up something and was sick herself. She didn't want to spread it around to me and the kids.
Halloween weekend is my last free weekend before I leave for another tour, so I'd been talking with my sister about her Halloween plans. I could come down and we could take her kids and my kids trick-or-treating together, and the she could take the bigger kids to a Halloween party afterwards.

My sister emailed me the other day. She was going to go have lunch with Mom and Dad at the nursing home on Halloween day. "I'm going to let the kids wear their costumes. The old people there really like seeing the kids."

I've been so busy this week. Lots of band duties, meetings, a photo shoot, parent-teacher conference, volunteering at the school Book Fair, Etsy stuff. Whew! I'd been trying to think of everything I would need to do in order to get out of here early enough on Saturday to drive to Houston and meet up with all of them by lunchtime, and had been going through the mental checklist of everything I'd need to pack and also trying to keep track of everything I still needed to do over the next couple of days. All the time I'm thinking that it would be fun for my kids to wear their costumes to the nursing home too. Then I was grinding the beans this morning. Coltrane is dressing up as the Grim Reaper this year. I can't take the kid into a nursing home dressed as the Grim Reaper. My sister's words came back to me, and I'm thinking that the old people would probably be less than delighted to see a miniature Grim Reaper wandering the halls. Maybe he could just stick his head in their rooms and say "Boo!"

What strikes me most is how this didn't occur to me sooner. What if it had taken longer? I was picturing myself hastily stripping Coltrane's costume off of him at the entrance way to the facility; us standing in front of automatic sliding doors with me struggling with the knot in his cloak or pulling his mask off. Trying to hide the 4 foot long plastic scythe, while explaining to him the inappropriateness of his costume in this kind of setting. Well, the whole thing made me giggle a little.