Slow Motion

This past weekend was one of those where time does this weird thing of moving with a peculiar langour. Its not as if there seemed to truly be more time, rather, it seemed that the time there was stretched out, pulled thin. As Bilbo Baggins once said of himself "like butter spread across too much bread."

The original plans for the weekend were pleasant enough, dinner with friends on Saturday and then of course celebrating Mother's Day. But Thursday morning I received a phone call from a relative I had not heard from in a long time. Five years, in fact. I knew it wasn't going to be good news and I was right. An uncle had passed away, and so I needed to go to the funeral in Houston.

Okay, I made the necessary phone calls, found my suit, fiddled around until I remembered how to tie my tie, and went to bed early Friday night. At 5AM I got up, dressed, and headed out. It's amazing the sort of time you can make on the roadways of cities early on a Saturday morning. Still, it took three hours to get there. I attended the services, had lunch with an aunt, and headed back. The return trip took around 4 hours, as traffic and construction had congested the byways of Houston in the meantime.

In my absence, Trish and Jacob were both sick. Nothing too bad, but a general feeling of tiredness, with fever, some coughing, etc. They spent the day pretty much moving slowly aside from a quick trip to the store for comfort food and frozen dinners. So, when I staggered in the door around 5pm, we were all pretty much in the same boat.

The next day, I got up, made a simple Mother's Day breakfast and went to teach Sunday School to the pre-K/K group. I managed it, came home, and then realized that I now had what Trish and Jake were beginning to get over. I laid down on the bed for about 2 1/2 hours, then spent the rest of the day moving slowly, counting the hours until dinner and bedtime.

Jake was clearly feeling much better as the day wore on, which only contributed to my feeling of being stuck in cold molasses. Trish chose to take a mulligan on the day, and we declared that Mother's Day would be celebrated in full the following Saturday.

Yesterday, everyone seemed to have recovered more or less fully. Time resumed its normal march.