So my dad was rushed to the ER last night, for causes we still don't know.
He's O.K. now, and home. So that's good. I would feel better, though, if we knew what really happened.
But my real train of thought has to do with a very different hospital visit three years ago.
Or rather a series of them.
Has it really been three years?
I've said it before, but some days, the hurt, the fear, the loneliness of that summer all come rushing back to me at once, attacking me so that I barely know what do do with them.
and other days, it feels like it all happened to someone else, like a bad movie. Maybe based off of a Nicholas Sparks book. (Or not, because no one fell in love, and no one died. O.K., nevermind...)
But the thought that this visit, this episode, this time, brought to mind was something more personal, I guess. By that I mean that it had more to do with me than even with my Dad at all.
I was with some Baylor friends--Maggie, Erica, and Jacob--at the time of the panicked phone call from my mom. When I hung up the phone and started to explain a little of my Dad's history with hospitals, it struck me that this is a part of me and my life that the friends I have made in the past year know very little about. As I joked with them, it's not like,
"Hi, I'm Antonia, I'm an English major, and my Dad had Lymphoma three years ago. Chemo sucked, he had no hair, and there were times we didn't know how everything would turn out. So what are you studying?"It's not a secret, not something I try to hide, but I just don't bring it up that often.
But it's so strange that these many new people in my life that I feel like I have grown close to in the past months don't know that Antonia.
The one whose life was engulfed with cancer, with hospitals, with sometimeshopelessness, with a degree of numbness to everything, and with watching 5 seasons of CSI: Veg
as because we didn't know what else to do.
It's just odd to me.
Who else might they not be familiar with?
- Theater Antonia: who was involved in nearly every AHA play and showcase, and who was an almost-theater-major. Who poured her life into The Visitors. And TAPPS. (Oh, TAPPS, how I based my worth off of your worthless ballots for so long...)
- Volleyball Antonia?: not much to say here, except that I played for most of high school. yep, that's it.
- Crazy, Attached-to-Alia-at-the-hip Antonia: who got in trouble with the security guard (basically for being silly.) Who jumped into trash cans at times. Who often engaged in ridiculous accents with Alia (so often that people begged us to stop.) Who made mad dashes and did other random things that only we could get away with.
- Miss Antonia: who became a mom from 3-6 p.m. during the school year, and on various days during the summer. who could be caught saying lots of weird things to kids like, "no more kindergartners in the bushes!!!!" who could also be found doing weird things like washing glitter out of her hair and detaching kids' t-shirts from their
braces.
hm. there's probably more, but I can't think of them, and I'm feeling narcissistic enough as it is.
now, I'm also wondering, how am I changing now? which Antonia have my Dallas/AHA friends not seen?
I don't have an answer for that one yet.
Yeah, I think that's all I got.
in His beauty, grace, and light,
good night.
