Hello Fear......

Hello Fear,

I sat across from you today. The minute that my father called and starting jokingly asking where I've been. He knows that I live in Atlanta and its been snowing (an unlikely event) for the past three days and I been home, fighting cabin fever. Unbeknownst to me, my father checked himself into a clinic and was rushed via ambulance to a hospital. My father had chest pains and may have suffered a minor heart attack. He just had surgery yesterday to have two stints placed in his heart.

What you need to know is that my father is only 62 years old, that he is extremely healthy and is fit, that our family has no history of heart conditions or any other serious medical conditions. He has never smoked, always eaten healthy, been active daily and maybe has 4 beers a year...yes, a year. He was born in a Spanish speaking country, moved to the US and picked celery as his first job, then moved from a warm clime to a cold clime to work 6 days a week for 35 years. My mother and his wife died from breast cancer when we were just children and my father made the very hard decision to send us children to our grandparents to be raised, ...thousands miles away from him, while he struggled with the aftermath of a death, living in a foreign country and away from any family members. I have letters where my father wrote,...short, illegible letters telling us how hard he was working to get us children back, but that we had to wait until I was of age to take care of my younger siblings. The letters had silly little words to songs that told us how much he missed us and loved us. I love my father....he is a good, strong, loving man. Yes, extremely strict and I may post more on this later, but my father is my rock, my anchor, my own personal victory party.

Then you might understand how my world is trembling, how fear has made me realize how fragile it all is. I was outside making snowman with my daughters, sweeping the sprinkles that my daughters left on the counter tops and my father was in some hospital far away facing the scariest moment of his life and I was none the wiser. I am already an orphan... not really, but as a woman raising children of her own, I have struggled with age old questions and answers that a girl would normally get from her mother. But, I've always had my father, he hasn't been able to answer what color clothes I wore home from the hospital or how old I was when I first walked or said my first words. He was there when I had to go with him to buy my first bra, pads and hairspray. He monitored my phone calls, chaperoned my high school dates and taught me that a woman with grace is ever more beautiful than one with just beauty on her side.

But today, I thank you Fear, thanks for humbling me, thank you for reminding me of the fragility of life, thank you for the deep appreciation that he is well, that all will be well. Thank you for the intensity of my emotions, thank you for stepping aside and letting Grateful take your place.