chocolate cake for breakfast

Yes, I am eating chocolate cake for breakfast. Thanks to Bill Cosby for giving it approval and general thumbs up. (Here is the routine- I loved it all over again).
Someone who I don't even know very well in our shul handed the cake to Shifra yesterday on Shabbat with the instructions that it is for her ima. Given directly into the hands of a red-headed toothless 6-year-old, and it actually made it home to me. Either Shifra loves me a whole lot, or she is scared of me not getting chocolate cake. So, it is my breakfast. So there.

It may not always be fun to be a grown-up, but there are the perks.

This post is dedicated to Robert. I am trying to break out of the narcissism of depression.

You know, 10 months after Robert lost his full-of-life mother to cancer, I was fighting for my life. He went from one life-defining trauma to another. He helped me through every minute. He thought up a system of communicating with me while I was on a respirator. He counted the 90 staples as they were removed from my skin graft. Those were staples that kept my body together. He counted them for me so I would know what a hero I am.

He gave everything to me and our children. He collapsed on the couch at the end of every evening, when the last child was in bed, completely drained. Then he'd get up sometime in the middle of the night and clean up the kitchen from the whirlwind of a day gone by.
Then, join me in bed, perhaps help with my pillows or give me pain medicine, then fall asleep for another few hours until it all would start again. He did that, and, to a large extent, still does.

Now his father's life is very fragile. It is hovering between this world and the next. Robert is living day-to-day not knowing if the next call is The Call. Shabbat has tension until night fall Saturday evening, when Robert can call the hospital in North Carolina and find out weather or not his father survived the 25 hours we were "off line".

He prays, he researches (often at 2AM) all the problems his father has to overcome to just be able to be wheeled out of the hospital; he cries, he perseveres. He moves, dutifully, from important calls to the doctors in the US straight to fathering. Often with no pause to process the phone call he just had. He lives in a world of duty and responsibility.

Just now, I saw Robert for 45 seconds. That's it for seeing him today until 9 or so at night, when there will be a conference call, internationally, with all the 4 brothers discussing how to proceed regarding Dad. Robert just came in, dropped off 7 bags of groceries, and turned around to catch his bus to go to work. Thankfully I did get a chance to tell him I love him.

The pressures are tremendous. Raising four children (may Gd protect them always), and at the same time being entwined in the welfare of aged, loved, life-giving parents. And may I add a few extras, while I'm at it? ...The bank called us to inform us of the intolerable overdraft. And I need a car I can drive (we are fixing Kermit, but have no money to pay for it until we sell the other car). And I still need [non-narcotic] pain killers. And there is no physiotherapy yet. And it is becoming clear that the Bursitis pain was the dominating pain I had/have. The PVNS, now removed, was not the main pain.

But I have to leave all that and give everything I can to Robert, I know that. He'll be leaving for the US soon, maybe next week, with my blessings.

Illness can make one narcissistic. It is a heavy balance, isn't it.

I think we all need some chocolate cake for breakfast. You in?