Mariah’s Reemergence

A day for rest and time with family:

Mariah slept in Saturday, just like Friday. Hey, it’s the weekend. No school on Saturday or Sunday, right? So the only news I have to pass on about Saturday was that Mariah still knows how to pamper herself on a day off from school. Or rather she knows how to make her brother pamper her. Her head was real itchy and upon taking note of her perennial scratching, I reached over her bed and helped out. After a minute or two my hand drifted off and no sooner had I stopped than Mariah piped up, in a very sweet little voice, “Clay?”
“yes?”
“Will you keep scratching my head…please?”
“Sure.”
….ten minutes pass, and, after my hand drifted off again…
“Clay?”
“yes?”
“Would you please give me a back rub?”
“sure, I’d be happy to.”

Well, it was only a little while after the back massage (oh yeah, and hand massage, lets not forget that) that a little voice piped up again,

“Clay?”
“mmhm…?” (Clay is watching TV)
“Will you rub my feet?”
“What?! Are you freakin’ kidding me?!”

******

Sunday is coming to a close. We lucked out today. During lunch in the dining room (which she mostly avoided yesterday), the nurses had arranged (as I hoped) for us to go off campus. So, at 12:30, Ramon, Clay, Mariah, and nurse Lori all headed down to the Wounded Warrior van to ride over to the Science Museum. But before leaving, we were intercepted by Suzanna and Glen with Zoe and Chai (the dogs). Mariah spent a few minutes with her beloved dog and her friends while I pulled up the van and Ramon donated his navigator GPS system.

After a short ride we hung out in the museum playing with enlarged stuffed dominoes that Mariah kicked over, a huge bubble-blowing device (like a two-way mirror made out of a wall of bubble-blowing juice!), and lots of scientific stuff, like laser lights and light prisms and so on. Then we all sat in the IMax theater for a 45 minute showing of “Grand Canyon Adventure”. Mariah ate a hot dog, a bag of Chexmix, and even shared her Cheez-its with me while we delved into the Grand Canyon on the astronomical 3-D dome-shaped movie screen. I don’t know about Mariah, but I sure had a blast.

Mariah came back in the late afternoon for a visit with mom, and caught an early bedtime after a shower cuz the little lady was all tuckered out!

Stay tuned, and please please keep praying for Mariah, Mark, Mary, and Clay, as well as anyone else struggling to accept the seemingly unacceptable.

Love and Light,
Clay