(I know I can do it, but that doesn't make it any less frightening.)

I mistakenly called it clairbuoyant when I was little and he never said it the correct way again.

***

Everyone keeps asking me (no I haven't finished Heidi yet. Working on it, rage-reading) how I'm doing and I just widen my eyes slightly and point. Guess they have the wrong person. Guess everything I've been though is but a drop in the proverbial bucket in comparison to Ben, and Daniel, who have seen more hardship in their lives than I, but also Ben took a double-blast as he tried to shield Daniel from the worst of it, charring his skin to a thick shell, keeping it turned toward the rest of the world thereafter. 

Ben has dealt with some terrible things, and he ended up in recovery finally (AA not the room outside surgery) only to have Caleb come for him and fuck him up just enough that the hospital pumped him full of drugs (!) (!!) (!!!) to make him comfortable for the fight to go home. 

And here he is. 

He's been through his shit, and you've been through yours. August is holding a glass of ice water against his t-shirt and it's soaking through. But he is intent and focused on my face, waiting for the tell-tale expression that will give my hiding place away. 

My shit is not relevant this week. 

It is. Too you and the people who care about you and you don't need to backburner your own struggles to achieve martyrdom for looking after Ben. 

Was I? Can you cite any concrete examples?

You've been a machine this week?

I try and change the subject. How is virtual burning man? (It's trash. Don't look) I smirk for good measure. August is not an internet boy. He gets the news when someone tells him. He phones the bank to do transfers. He is practically Amish and I love him for it though he also sends me naked, headless selfies so the potential is there and it's not even...untapped. 

(Snort.) 

Burning building, Augie. I told you it was important to save Ben first. Now it's really important. It's like I knew already and have just been doing drills.

Maybe you foretold the future-

My eyes grow wide again and I turn and hurry back to the house, back to Ben, back to the safety of the coloured lights illuminating the late summer birthday sky, away from what was supposed to be a guess, that got it right so readily I knew then for sure that I really was dealing with the Devil himself.

Still can't get him to go into his studio. Didn't expect that but he says he just wants to be close. :)

 Birthday cake baking is well underway. I keep giving Ben tiny chores like fetching the flour or washing the measuring cups and turning on the oven light and after looking at him sideways one too many times thinking he would revolt he finally asked if I was okay. 

Yes. Are you?

I'm fine. Bee, I'm just happy to be standing here right now. You know how long it's been since I could properly hold you?

(By properly he means nakedly, of course.)

I nod. Not going to cry. Dammit. No no no no no don't. Daniel needed-

Daniel has Schuy. You needed the reassurance. I would have kicked him out but he was asleep too fast. 

He's your brother. 

You're both my family-

Blood is thicker-

Thicker than us, Bridge? No, it's the same. We're family, same as Dan and I are brothers, you and I are forever together.

I wish this hadn't happened to you, Benny. 

Sometimes bad things are just a reset button for a new direction.

What direction are we going in now? 

Forward. We've been sideways for too long. He grins his big goofy nerd grin at me and I burst into tears.

Make us who we are.

I had a moment of panic yesterday late afternoon when I suddenly wondered if we were capable of bringing Ben home after all, even though I wanted to so badly. If we could manage. What would happen if something went wrong, as we're close to an hour from the nearest hospital. 

(It's just like that feeling when they let you leave the hospital after giving birth and you just take your baby with you and you're thinking, what? You're just going to let me leave with this fragile human? I don't even know how to take care of them. Are you sure? Do I have to sign something? Do I need to pay for them? Aren't you coming with me? Is there an instruction manual? Oh my God, they're crying again, maybe we should stay a little longer?)

Ben just wanted his own bed, though when he went to have a shower Daniel came up with him and sat on the bench outside the bathroom with the door cracked open just a little in case Ben got dizzy or anything went wrong because I could happily watch him shower but if he slips or keels over I can't physically catch him. Too small. 

Lochlan could do it but not full weight without any warning. That's a lot to ask.

But nothing bad happened and now Ben smells like our soap instead of institution and Daniel has finally exhaled as it is the two of them in this world and goddammit they've been through enough. Once he was judged to be fine Ben said he was going to go to bed early and Daniel went and curled up beside him. I cried because Daniel was so afraid during this but he was so brave and this seems right. He needs this, needs his big brother and as much as I wanted it I can wait another day.

Even in sleep Benjamin still looks like a raging maniac. He'll have permanent scarring underneath his hair (when it grows back in). He has headaches and moments of vertigo and confusion if people talk too fast all at once (God help us in this house) and he reaches for the handrail and considers stairs and inclines for a beat, leaving me profoundly grateful for Emmett's railings. He loses focus easily and gets angry easily. He's afraid to go into his studio but we're going to tackle that this morning maybe, if he wants. He's tired. So tired. But he's intact and his brain is working and they say everything will either come back in time, or not and just to wait and see.

Thank you for your prayers that I stole a couple of weeks ago. They worked and I will repay you when the time comes that you need them returned, though I hope that doesn't happen.

Microaggressions.

Edgar, holy FUCK. How did you go from the Point Break remake to The Last Days of American Crime? Did you read the script or...TL;DR.

 How is it even possible for a film to be this badly written?

A whole fifteen seconds here or there had the potential for greatness but really this treatment was written by someone who watched a couple of seventies crime movies and figured it looked easy.

Gosh. Not even one star. 

***

It's fucking FREEZING out. I turned the heat on. I think I'll bring the tomatoes in to ripen. Fuck it. Though it is supposed to swing back to hot at the end of the week. I think whenever I bake birthday cakes I summon intense heat waves and have to fret about condensation and melting icing constantly as we have a disproportionate amount of summer birthdays here on the point. I suppose I could buy cakes that are a little more hardy but no one likes the taste of those unless they're ice cream cakes but we are all old now and those are too rich and stupidly expensive and again, not as good as homemade.

Then again, I've never made an ice cream cake, specifically. 

I actually saw a cookbook online the other day that was all about 'reinventing' cake.

I was so offended.

***

I'm about to spend an hour with a youtube video featuring a little old man and an oil can and service my own sewing machine. Lochlan figures I can do it. Gosh. He's brave. I might be brave too, as it doesn't look overly complicated. 

Kind of like writing an action script.

HA. 

I know, shut up cranky Bridget.

A princess perched in her electric chair

It's four o'clock in the morning
Damn it listen to me good
I'm sleeping with myself tonight
Saved in time, thank God my music's still alive

Ben couldn't hit the notes, citing a headache coming on and I refused to help him. 

Just do it, Bee. Please.

Not that song. That song is a catalyst for misery and I can't, Ben.

Misery is your blood.

We're not going to do this right now. 

This is a pointed, sharp conversation because Ben lost some time during/after his accident and he's angry because I didn't save him, Caleb did. He would have died had Caleb not been there. The irony is that he wouldn't have landed on his head on concrete had Caleb not been there.

(AND BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE TO FLY-)

We'll do it later. I cut him off even as the notes are now swirling in my head but I'm just trying to outrun/hurry through the notes in Tiny Dancer, the song that comes next on my Elton John smart playlist because I organized it to tell a story and Elton knows how to bring the feels. 

My life is a fucking musical, and it's two weeks today since Caleb hurt Ben so badly it's permanently changed not only Ben's life but all of our lives as we try to 'navigate our new normal' as Ben's doctors keep telling us, causing me to swear out loud and yell something about nothing ever being normal in our lives, that where I come from 'normal' is a dirty word but hurting each other is absolutely not allowed and that resulted in a dramatic moment where Lochlan physically carried me out of the conference room in a bear hug while I pointed out Ben could hurt every last one of the boys but the difference is he WOULDN'T and he's absolutely untouchable and the 'new normal' is that maybe Caleb should leave. 

Sorry, I have moments like that. Moments where I hate everyone, moments where everything is scary and wrong and a lump comes up in my throat and it hurts so fucking bad. 

They wanted me to talk to one of their crisis counsellors thinking this was all reactionary for what's happened but over the course of Ben's stay the nurses have gotten our whole life story but not the doctors and they get the high-level emotional wave we ride in and out on, they somehow understand that nothing about any of this is normal, nor will it ever be.

But today I can't see Jesus, just vengeance. Today I'm a superhero with no power, I'm a livewire and they've already cut the breaker, I'm a mess and no one has a mop.

Jesus Christ, Sam says as I unload all of this on the table when Caleb arrives at the hospital to help Ben sing and I leave so fast I break a nail on the door going out.

I told you! He's not even here today! I yell it at Sam. I don't mean to but like they said, it's probably reactionary. 

Right.

Virgo season.

Another beautiful day and I'm getting the house ready for Ben's return, though the boys didn't leave a lot for me to do. They took over the chore chart, picked up the slack and then went above and beyond, pulling it until it sang, stretched tight over our little point like a line, ready for a funambulist (meeeeeee) to show off on. I'll have help doing the formal dinners this week, and in baking the cakes.

Life is a tightrope. If ever there was a metaphor, it would be this.

They've scrubbed every trace of construction away. Emmett also went above and beyond. I gave him a blank slate and zero plans, told him what I need and asked that it all blend in so it was virtually unnoticeable. He did exactly that and I requested that Caleb tip him handsomely and then doubled that. That's how you keep someone good. You make it rain. 

Didn't work for Caleb though. He thought money would make me come running. I did, but I ran away from him instead of towards him.

He's going to spend the fall working on figuring out how to blow off steam, how to keep his explosive temper in check and how to coexist peacefully with the rest of us. They were working so hard to incorporate him into the house but it seems as if he still falls back on his old flaws, still pretends he is above us, still separates himself from the group. Sam has some names and I get to pick one for Caleb and he can go and lay his heart bare a couple of times a week to someone with threadbare cuffs in a worn scrubbed office and not complain even once because I have asked for that and that would mean more to me than another stupid payout. No settlement can save him from this. I forgave him quickly but as always I won't forget.

In the meantime, I acquiesced and sent Ben's new/favourite guitar in with Sam and Matt this morning so he could serenade his nurses and reassure himself that he can still play. It's a Gretsch baritone and it's cherry. He found it practically for free and only had to replace the coils and strings and it became number one pretty quickly. They'll probably bring it back tonight but he'll have that peace of mind. We keep finding strange things that he can't do that his team says will return in time. Nothing major, just little things like concentration if several people are talking at once or really super quick reactions to something falling, for example (mostly things some people struggle with in life anyway). It's hard to watch Ben get so frustrated so I think this will help and since it's actually electric, it makes less noise unplugged than his favourite Martin acoustic.

I may just take the guitar out of the case and hide myself in it so I can curl up in Ben's arms, come to think of it. I think his touch is what I miss most about the past few weeks. There's not nearly enough of it.

Ben is hopefully coming home early next week!

Lochlan was sad this morning so I sang to him. Specifically I sang Hard For Me (which is a fucking BEAUTIFUL song from 365 Days, sung by the actor himself in real life, Michele Morrone.) but I did it with Michele's heavy Italian accent and by the end Lochlan was doubled over, shoulders shaking, face beet red from laughing but I hit every note, fuckers and cheering him up was well worth it.

Because he returned the favour and now I keep breaking into fits and giggles even thinking about it. Lochlan has a great and terrible habit of taking on accents that don't belong to him and he sounds very strange without his clipped staccato consonants. And he mimicked the great shuddering breath before the final line and I think I'm done for the day. 

Also, the playlist this is on (on my phone) rolls right into Lana Del Rey's The Greatest and it's just gorgeous. 

So he's not sad anymore but he was only sad in that way you're sad when you momentarily realize that summer is almost over and it's dark earlier in the evenings, or that your children are both going to graduate in the next year's time frame (365 days, again) and that life keeps going. But at least he isn't sad anymore.

Happy Friday. At last. Next week is birthday week and I have a lot of things to do.

This is nothing and everything and weirdly full of spoilers but if you haven't read this book that's been out for a hundred and forty years then I'm not really worried.

Okay so many times here I have extolled the virtues of Heidi, one of my favourite books as a child purely because the description of mealtime with the fresh goat milk and crusty bread with toasted cheese sent me over a carbohydrate edge that is sharp as fuck. It's stuck with me my whole life and I love to have cheese bread for breakfast, despite being ridiculously lactose intolerant.

I threw the book in my bag on one of my quick visits home to grab stuff. I've had so much time to sit in a hard chair and do nothing. Play games on my phone. Draw on my ipad. I watched two whole really good series on Netflix (Outer Banks and Unsolved Mysteries) and I prayed. I facetimed with Daniel so many times I have PTSD just looking at his face and I texted with Lock and with PJ by the minute. 

But sometimes I would make tea and read. They let me use this little kitchenette and tea was the only thing that kept me from cracking like a brittle ice shelf from how cold they keep the floors. 

And I picked up Heidi, thinking it might be comfort-reading. An old favourite book I haven't read since childhood. I look at the author's name and wonder if she wrote anything else. Johanna Spyri. I didn't realize the book was so old (1880) or that she wrote so much, but that's neither here nor there.

This book is fucking insane. Not only is Heidi passed around like an unwanted puppy but no one actually cares for her safety and she's five years old. There's a long human-trafficking segment where she is taken from the mountain and sent to Frankfort to be held prisoner in a city home as a companion for a disabled girl before the girl's father takes pity on her and has her sent back to the Alm Uncle on the side of the mountain, in care of his butler, who abandons her halfway there to a random guy with a cart who promises to take her the rest of the way.

She is taught about God while in the city too and decides that God is her personal wish-genie. No one ever questions this simplified, bizarre new life-plan of hers. 

Oh, and dinner rolls are worth more than gold in this story. 

Magically she learned to read in the year and a half she was there because Heidi is all about self-preservation. 

I have one chapter left and I'm gobsmacked by how bad this is in comparison to how vivid and delicious the descriptions are of her first few days on the mountain. I'm so embarrassed now. And stunned at how poorly this has aged compared books of fifty years later, like the Little House on the Prairie series but wow, now I know.

Pride, prejudice and zomb-Ben.

I brought Ben his phone today, let him make a couple of quick calls and send a couple emails off and then he passed it back. It hurts his eyes, he said. 

You're probably just allergic to work now, I pointed out and he laughed. 

He asked for his favourite guitar but we vetoed that, as not only is it not appropriate in a quiet hospital wing, private room or not, but he can look forward to playing when he gets home. 

He agreed. He's been very agreeable. He goes with whatever we say, whatever is decided and he just motors through milestones and progress markers and keeps stable and steady and he sleeps a fair bit and while he's not high now from pain meds he was a few days ago and I worry about what that means for his recovery but he said we'll take it one step at a time and I laughed because the irony and he didn't but he smiled.

We're all just thrilled that his brain is no longer leaking out of his nose. 

***

Masks are now my new all-time favourite accessory (don't worry, I've been wearing them for months), as I have one of those faces that not only can't make a poker face but I perpetually look as if I'm about to burst into tears when I'm not actively smiling. I always said my superpowers, if I could have them would be hiding my true feelings instead of broadcasting them with my eyes, and writing my name with pee in the snow, but that's not really relevant right here, it's just something I would like to be able to do. If I can refrain from raising my eyebrows I look completely normal and like I believe what you're telling me.

***

 Caleb has sought redemption quietly. He's hung back. He's facilitated the contractors coming in and doing a general sizing up and adding all sorts of accessibility to the house that brings a physical ease where before the house was accessible only in terms of hearing. The lights flicker when the doorbell rings or the gate intercom buzzes, plus there is a small light attached to the inside of each door which lights up really bright if you knock on the outside. Our smoke alarms are these super piercing rave/strobe lights and I have a flashing-light alarm clock that wakes me up. They lowered the ceiling heights on the main floor to nine feet from vaulted to help with the echoing and there are lots of other tiny touches like water alarms in case water is left on from a tap and I don't hear it and we have hard wood on all floors downstairs so that I can hear you coming.

They're putting in an elevator from the studio to the main level. As I said the other day we're adding railings and grab bars wherever we can. They've opted to put in higher toilets because it's easier to sit on them when you're tall and the tall people in this house outnumber the short (uh, me. Even Ruth is tall and willowy). They're adding non-slip tiles in the kitchen, foyer, garage and bathrooms, the front steps are being retrofitted to be nonslip. We're just going to bubblewrap everything we never did before, ironic again because when we moved in with a nine year old and an eleven year old we didn't have this much safety in mind, choosing instead to teach the kids to watch out for hazards than to assume they would be safe. 

Ben will not need most of these additions but they're never a bad thing, and with Emmett doing the work I know it will blend in seamlessly with the design of the house. And I made sure it's going to cost Caleb a blooming fortune. He may not even be living here once Ben comes home, though he has played advocate to himself and has pointed out that if Lochlan had hauled off and punched someone who then suffered a TBI I would not make him leave. 

He's not wrong but they really have to stop using their fists to try and fix their bruised egos (and brains).

Love is the most selfish of all the passions.

 It's a beautiful day. I took a deep breath and it didn't hurt. The sun is shining, but it didn't burn. Our tomatoes are ripening but not splitting. I brought one in for Ben, salt shaker wrapped in a napkin in my purse because he likes them with a little salt and he said it was the best thing he's ever eaten. Then he winked at me and laughed gently. He can't laugh too hard or his head hurts. 

He's in a private room and let me tell you being able to have a good long conversation with him and not being told that he needs to sleep or I need to leave so they can change tubes and bags and test him and feed him and listen to the noises of the machines while I wonder exactly how hard his brain hit the inside of his skull and what the fallout from this might mean for the future of the biggest, strongest man I know.

The doctors have gone from cautious to practically packing his bags for him.

(Just kidding. He has no bags. Only the clothes he came in wearing. No phone. No watch. No nothing. Not even his reading glasses.)

And Lochlan is with me today so we can spend time with Ben together. Three musketeers.