I took Friday and Saturday to relax a bit and decompress from the crazy week. Although it had only been a few days since we had received word of my mom’s prognosis, it seemed a lot longer. I decided that I would take Friday to get the oil changed in our car and get a haircut as well as talking to the nursing home staff to discuss mom’s care and figuring out the car situation for my next trip to Massachusetts even though I was pretty sure that I would be taking Alise’s car on Sunday.

Saturday was a beautiful day. I canceled my class and spent most of the day playing outside with the kids while Robyn worked. We went for a nice walk around the neighborhood. I was surprised when I got a call in the morning from my brother Mike who I’ve not actually spoken with in over 15 years. When I saw his name come up on the caller ID, I had a feeling that our conversation would be weird and awkward but we quickly fell into a comfortable discussion of mom’s condition and onto other things in our lives like his kids and my kids and our work and even our father. It was a really nice talk and we made an agreement to stay in touch before we hung up.