The more things change the more they stay the same. If you think it's bad right now, just wait a few minutes, it's bound to be worse. Make up any good assembly of really pointless things folks say during trying moments, bind up those sayings, and forward them here for future publication. Things began to go downhill on Saturday morning last. Diana called at 5:00 am to say that she was getting her mother to take her over the emergency room to take care of her burst appendix. She would have driven herself over but there was a problem with the carriage, and she felt like the engine belt had slipped off.
"You're going to have an operation?"
"I think it's unavoidable."
"Can your mother make it. The hour and everything?''
"She will be here in a minute." So with this certainty, El Gringo Viejo advises that he will immediately begin to pass command to Alvaro, who is 100 miles and six hours by a really good bus service and schedule. Dogs, cats, and visitors and security issues have to be addressed before northward progress can be made.
Alvaro arrives during the late afternoon and begins putting order back into my negligence. It is too late to reasonably leave and arrive before nightfall at the frontier. Besides, at these hours there are weather travel advisories for our area, from Linares down to Cd. Victoria for heavy thunderstorms, stationary, with much lightning and golf ball sized hail. One of the connector roads generally used by our return route, between Padilla and Barretal, has already received between 6 and 9 inches of rain.
Alvaro goes home during the night around sunset. By 03:00 the next morning, we have had six inches of rain. Lightning and thunder have driven all the animals onto the corridor. Bebe, the Labrador, has demanded and gained reluctantly rendered permission to take refuge in the parlour. Power was lost at 00:15 when a very slight misjudgement by a driver trying to park a bus into a new parking area to protect it from lightning and hail. He had backed into a power poll, and even though there was no damage to bus or pole, the jolt had caused two high tension lines to make contact and blow a transformer.
Two calls were accomplished between the frontier and the Quinta in the midst of everything, advising that an operatin had been ordered for the late afternoon, and later that the operation had been a success, the appendix had ruptured, and that the children had made the trip down from the center of Texas to render all needed assistance. I left in the rain at 06:00 hours on Sunday morning, and drove non-stop to the border in a little more than five hours. The area between the Quinta to Santander Jimenez was heavily impacted by from seven to fourteen inches of rain, depending upon the locale.
The processing out for my vehicular importation papers was accomplished quickly, and the customs and immigration inspection on the American side was quick and with a relatively short line. So, all in all, folks were surprized to see El Gringo Viejo arriving at a good hour. Diana, always tough and resilient, was sitting in a fancy chair in a private room, looking perky but a bit tired. Our two children had done all the necessary running around, taking pressure off of their grandmother. And I had arrived in time to take all the credit for suffering so much.
It should be pointed out that Gringo Viejo is 65 years old in a couple of days. So, he shall allow the OROGs to determine his mother-in-law's approximate chronological location. It fell to her to care for the daughter who has been mowing the lawn and checking-in on her a couple of times per day. But, there she was, driving over in the dark, walking up and down the corridors of an hospital, filling out the forms, doing the question and answer sessions about allergies, and all the things that are so necessary and unpleasant. She handled essentially all the primary and secondary necessaries during the first critical day, during what was a true, life-threatening emergency. She is and always has been a very high-class, loyal, supportive, and contributing-type person, true to her Roman Catholic catechism and her characteristic, classical American principles.
The next few days will find the boss going back to work and edging into solid food. I shall be here to attend, do the errands, and so forth....feeling guilty about not being on the firing line when the first shots were fired. The boss is very tight-lipped about any interior family and/or medical issue, so comment will be scarce in days to come. We have just been advised that she will be released tomorrow, after undergoing major surgery late on Holy Saturday. About sixty hours, in and out. It reminds us of when she had the second baby in the early morning and was back at home in the afternoon, washing dishes and putting things back in order that I had dishevelled during her 18-hours absence from the house just to have a baby.
Comments about other matters coming up. Good to be with everyone. Christ is risen. Alleluia, Alleluia!
El Gringo Viejo
