from DM.

My father recently emailed me in response to a post I did on my mother:

Notes in red, are from me

Dear Freyja: 

Respecting your recent blog on things you have learned from your mother:

Volley balls are more delicate than soccer balls and shouldn't be kicked with the point of the foot.  They get out of round, or even delaminate (take the laminate off?).  Some leagues now allow legal hits with the legs and feet, but it wasn't always so (pre-1998).  I don't  like to see people kicking around a VB, for the damage it does, but  It also seems disrespectful of the sport, so I determined to raise of generation of non-despoilers (gotta pull out the dictionary).  It even bothers me to see people shooting hoops with a volleyball, but I don't have a valid reason to interfere with this blaspheme, so I leave it be.  Volleyballs make good prison balls (is there something I don't know about your past? Prison?) and I have played with them in that sport, so I guess I'm being inconsistent. 

Mom didn't wrap Fletcher in tape when he broke his arm, I did, and it was to immobilize his joint, like a sling or splint, for the trip to the St. Vincent emergency room, not as some home remedy to avoid paying money to physicians.  He didn't fall out of the apple tree, he tumbled off a 2x4.  it spanned the distance, at a slight incline, from the picnic table top to the crotch (he he) of the apple tree and he was walking it tightrope style and it turned on him and he fell all of 3 feet to the soggy grass of the back yard. 

I didn't see the fall, I was looking elsewhere, but Mom hollered my name with such urgency, that I knew instantly that something serious had happened.  I've heard that tone of voice from her maybe a handful of times and it is unmistakable (Like the time toddler Audrey got whisked out to sea by a sneaker wave and you took pictures of mom saving her?). 

I still don't know how he hurt himself falling three feet and onto such a soft surface, but he must have landed wrong.  It is the only clumsy physical thing I think he's ever done (don't forget about that time he braked too suddenly riding his bike on the vista brook trail and flew face first into a blackberry bush. It was classic).

We put him on the floor of the van, between the seats,  he was looking pretty pale and was probably in shock.  They put some pins in his elbow that evening and I stayed with him in his room overnight.  We watched "Apollo 13" on the TV, and he was home the next day.

I got some compliments from the emergency room staff for the wrapping tape job (Are you sure you don't mean "odd looks"? He He! J/K).  Mom was asked to be with him in the x-ray room, but she couldn't watch them manipulate his arm.  She was getting light-headed, so I went in with him.

as to Mom's overcooking meat.  She recently left for some meeting with pork chops in the oven and bade me turn the  heat off at 1:30 PM.  I pulled them out of the oven twenty minutes early and they were tender, juicy and flavorful.  Perfect.  Regards, DM.