A call came that my surgery was bumped up by an hour, so I scrambled to find a different ride to the hospital since my previously scheduled ride couldn't make the earlier time. The usual single mother dilemma. Another friend sweetly picked me up and dropped me off. I was ushered in, changed and climbed into a bed covered by a blanket of paper and dry-cleaning bag cellophane, filled with warm air. Weirdly comforting and uncomfortable at the same time.

I still wasn't sure of the pick-up arrangement. Friend? daughter? Whomever was most available. And then he texted that his flight would land in time to pick me up. A weight lifted with a smile and an SMH (Liv speak for "shake my head") marveling at how things just fall into place when you most need them to. When you let go and don't try too hard to force them.

Maybe it was the Theta Healing that I did around the surgery that made it so easy, calm, relaxed, allowing things to fall into place as they did. Or else it was the incredible surgical team who have their procedures whittled down to a fine-tuned machine, right down to tiny tubes of Blistex so my lips wouldn't become dry, handed to me by the anesthesiologist with instructions to "apply liberally."

I awoke to a delicious abandon, a state between sleep and awake. Pain was minimal until it wasn't. My IV was injected once more and the pain was minimal again.

And then he was there. He sat patiently beside me, holding my hand, listening to the incessant litany of instructions from the nurse. I looked at him and he smiled and I knew that he too was equally bemused by the barrage of words. He helped me to hobble home, made dinner, tucked me into bed and I felt well-cared for for the first time in a very long time.

Life doesn't get any sweeter than that.

Four days post-op I am back to being a single mom, albeit with kids who begrudgingly fetch for me and drive to the grocery store and put out the recycling. But a single mom who still has to make dinner and clean up and make waffles for a sick child and go to school-dictated evening meetings hobbling all the while.

Pieces have been removed, tendons snipped, skin stitched and now the mending begins. The long slow arduous climb back to what I once was. I've been here before. 

Piece of cake.