You know what I get a lot?
“You live next to your in-laws? Isn’t that a little, um, close?”
You know what the truthful answer is? It isn’t close enough.
We’re blessed. We do, in fact, live next door to Heather’s parents, and it’s absolutely great. We get along, we get each other coffee, we get together for pizza night.
And in particular, there’s this woman called Earlene, also known as Heather’s mom but most often referred to as “Nana,” who pretty much allows our world to go ’round. In our two-career family, it has been Nana who has essentially raised each of our three kids, and go figure, they’ve turned out to be pretty wonderful, smart, well-adjusted kids. Yes, even Mason.
Nana is part teacher, part chef, part therapist, part keeper of the house, part Lego enchantress, and all smiles. I saw her in a bad mood, once, two days ago when one of her dogs spilled hot tea all over her and her couch. It lasted about 40 seconds. She puts everyone in the world ahead of herself, every time, and doesn’t care to be recognized for it. Around her, you have no choice but to be a great person just to keep up.
So there’s that. And then it turns out she can rebound a basketball, too. She and I joined forces last night, and here’s how it went: For the first five minutes, we were just plain slow … like maybe a 500-per-hour clip. Turns out she was just studying, getting a feel for where she should be, because the next hour and 55 minutes, we were lightning. When it was over, we had logged 1,400, which happened to beat by 100 the number that her daughter and I had posted a few weeks ago, and beat by a whopping 370 the number her husband and I had put up way back on November 14.
How good was it? At 700, I asked her if she wanted to take a break. She looked at me as if she might smack me in the head.
And at the end, she insisted that in addition to it being an excellent workout, it was great fun as well, and that she would be willing to take it up full-time if needed. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. ”Anything you need” is kind of her thing.
That’s 88,607 down, 911,393 to go to 1 million.
Thanks, Nana.
