Okay...Maybe Not QUITE Paradise

In my last post, titled "Paradise," I regaled you with tales about our idyllic week-long lake vacation with our children and grandchildren at our Oyster Haven Vrbo rental house, and not one word that I wrote was a lie.  It was an amazing week, full of love and laughter, almost too good to be true.  Almost, but not quite.  I mean, as far as how things tend to go in the real world down here on planet earth (which can never truly be Paradise, but can in fact more adequately be described as the promised "Valley of Tears"), it was indeed a fairly magical and joy-filled week for the Pearl family. However, I did leave out a few details…

...there was one unfortunate freak accident that I didn't mention in that post, and it led to a two-night hospital stay for our #4 son.  I can imagine your wrinkled brow and the look of horror on your face, so please be assured that although it was quite scary there for a bit, our boy ended up being fine and his vacation week wasn't completely ruined.  (And throughout the ordeal, he kept saying that he was so glad that it happened to him and not one of the children.)

Okay, maybe I should go ahead and tell the whole story.

People started arriving for our Pearl-a-palooza on Saturday, July 19 and by Sunday, all the weary travelers had made it to the lake house.  All 35 of us were together, looking forward to a week of fun in the sun at our private sandy beach in our cozy private cove.  Then on Monday, while his kids were having a ball swimming and kayaking with their cousins, son #4 started wading out in waist-deep water to join them. As he was walking along, his thigh got poked by the razor-sharp branch of a log that must have drifted in from the nearby island during a windy spring storm or something (because we'd never seen this log before, during previous summers).  Right away, our son knew that he was going to need medical attention.  The puncture wound, while rather small, was extremely deep.  So deep that he could see the different layers of tissue inside.  He and his wife took off for the urgent care facility, where he was stitched up and told to watch for signs of infection.

Before long, the skin around the wound started to get pink and swollen and hot.  Our son and his wife contacted several nurse friends for advice, and one of them was surprised that the urgent care doc had opted to stitch it up. She told them to keep an eye on the reddened area, and to go back in if it started to grow.  They wisely drew a line all around the infected area with a black Sharpie marker, so that they could see if the redness was spreading.  By Tuesday, they knew there was a problem because the infection was creeping well past the circle they'd drawn, and they went back to urgent care.  The stitches were removed, and an antibiotic was prescribed. But by Wednesday, it was obvious that the medication wasn't knocking out the infection.  So they headed to the ER, and our son was admitted and put on IV antibiotics.  He ended up having to stay Wednesday and Thursday nights; and with the infection finally under control, he came home on Friday--which happened to be my birthday.  It was the best birthday present I've ever gotten, getting him back that day.

Through this whole ordeal, he never did run a fever.  He never got septic. He was well taken care of at the hospital.   But that dangerous-looking red area on his thigh haunted me until it finally began to fade and go away and he was back with us, safe and sound.

When I went to the hospital on Wednesday night to visit my boy, I had to take turns with his wife because they hadn't gotten a room for him yet and only one visitor at a time was allowed in the ER. After I got to see him and came out so that she could go in, I was just a blubbering mess, sitting there in the waiting room with tears streaming down my face. I let myself imagine all the what-ifs and was sick at the thought that this simple injury could become catastrophic.  Seeing how large the red area had grown, even after he’d received the first infusion of antibiotics, kind of terrified me, because I know that sometimes an uncontrolled infection can spell amputation and even in the worst cases, death.  I shed many tears (in private, so that our son's four kids and all of their cousins wouldn't see how worried Grammy was) and said a lot of prayers over those days that he was in the hospital.  But thanks be to God, the antibiotics worked and he came home to us in one piece.  

Our son had to keep his wound dry for the rest of the week in NY, so there was no more going in the lake for him, which was a bummer.  Even though his vacation was less than perfect, however, his boss gave him a few extra days off to make up for the ones he'd missed, and he did get to enjoy about four days post-hospital going for boat rides, watching his kids get tube rides behind the boat, and hanging out with the family and making us laugh, as always.  This son is an extremely funny person.  He has a knack for quietly delivering quick off-hand remarks worded in such a way that they totally hit the funny bone.  When he was in the hospital, his room was on a floor where most of the patients were geriatric.  One nurse came in to take his vitals and told him that they were just great, the best she'd seen in a long time (remember, she was dealing with mostly elderly people, not young bucks like him).  My son, without missing a beat, replied, "I'm known for my vitals."  (He might have added something like, "They're my best feature," but since I don't blog regularly now, it's been so long since it happened that some of the details have gotten fuzzy!) I wasn't there, but my sister--the one with whom my mom lived for seven years--was visiting him at the time and witnessed this humorous exchange, and she said the nurse just loved him.

But I say, who wouldn't?!

He knew his situation could turn serious, but he stayed calm throughout and never lost his sense of humor.  He even weighed in on a funny conversation he heard that his brothers and their wives had been having back at the lake house, about being a nighttime shower person versus a morning shower person.  (It was loud and heated and pretty hilarious.  We are a family of strong opinions!) He said, "If I don't make it, tell [the sister-in-law who insists that not showering before going to bed is unthinkable] that I say not showering in the morning is gross."  The fact that he could joke about not making it...I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it.

Not too long before our vacation week, that same sister who visited him had told me about a local girl up here who'd had a similar incident: she got a cut that caused some weird raging infection.  But hers ended up going septic, and this poor gal ended up losing her leg.  She was just a teen, a young athlete who had to deal with a devastating blow like that.  The fact that my son completely recovered from his injury seems practically miraculous to me, when I think of how many families have outcomes that are so very different.  God has been very good to the Pearls, and a day doesn't go by that I don't humbly thank Him for all the blessings He's bestowed on us.  I am so incredibly grateful, for son #4's health and for so many other things.

So good to have him back--it just wasn't the same without him!

A hug for Daddy.

I'd love to know what he's saying here.  I would probably be laughing.

Enjoying my birthday present!

At least he got to do some of this!

We look forward to a do-over for son #4 next summer. And before anyone even thinks about going swimming, we'll all be policing the beach area to make sure there are no hidden dangers lurking in the water--like that rassa-frassin' log!  (Excuse my language!)

Until next time...be safe out there, dear readers!

Paradise

I started this post on July 29…and here it is, a whole month later, and I'm finally finishing it.

Okay, full disclosure: all I'd written so far was the title! Because at that time, we were just coming off of our annual week-long Pearl summer vacation at our Vrbo lake house, Oyster Haven, with all five of our boys, all five of their lovely wives, and all of their offspring--our 23 darling grandchildren (the oldest of which are 14-year-old twins, and the youngest of which is a cherubic little six-month-old).  What a fabulous week it was!! Crowded and noisy and messy, but just perfect.  And I couldn't wait to blog about it.  But for some reason, I just couldn't write the post.  In recent months (years!), I've been having the hardest time making myself sit down to update this neglected old site of mine. Then the more days that pass without doing it, the more it seems that perhaps I'm not invested enough anymore and it might be time to close up shop.  

But then I'll read an old post, and I'll smile and think, "I had forgotten all about that..."  Or I'll want to share a certain old picture on our family text stream, and I can't find it; then I'll remember that I used it in a blog post once--and voila, there it is, right there in my blog archives.  If I stop blogging now, maybe I'll miss having all these memorable family moments archived here, where I can go back and re-live them whenever I'm in the mood.  Perhaps, then, I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet.  

I don't know if you follow Jenny Uebbing (who used to write a blog called Mama Needs Coffee, which I loved so much, but can now be found writing at Jenny@MamaNeedsCoffee on Substack from time to time). She was one of those long-form "mommy bloggers" whose name was well-known in the Catholic blogging community and who like many of the other big influencers made the shift over to Instagram, but has mostly stayed off social media as of late.  I love when I see that she has a new post on Substack.  She is one of the online voices who occasionally wonders whether old-school blogs will rise out of the ashes once again.  I tend to doubt it, because I think everyone wants to scroll and digest quick tidbits before moving on to something else, rather than read one whole long essay. But I do hope blogs find a resurgence in popularity.

Not that I have any illusions that my little String o' Pearls would ever become popular or well-known, which is fine with me because I really do just blog for myself, as weird as that might sound. Because I like words.  I like playing with them, moving them around.  I like editing and re-writing.  Definitely weird.  Maybe all writers are a little weird (and it feels strange to even call myself a writer, but I kind of live for words and putting them down on paper--so I suppose that makes me one).

Anyway, I was going to finish up a post, right?  Before I got sidetracked.  A post about Paradise.  This is already longer than I wanted it to be, but that's okay.  I won't have to add too many more words, because the title tells the whole story, it does.  This place of ours on the shore of Lake Champlain is Paradise on earth, it truly is. Sometimes, I don't think it's worth the work and worry to manage a vacation property in NY when our primary residence is in VA...but then we have this week up here with our kids and grandkids, which they have come to look forward to all year long, and which is forming what we hope are lifelong happy memories of priceless family time shared with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents...and I know it's most definitely worth it.

So here's the photo dump, which will give you an idea of just how idyllic our week was.  (I'm sharing pictures that don't show close-ups of the kids' faces, out of respect for some of our boys' wishes,)

So you get the idea!  It was the best week.  The kids had SO MUCH fun together!

We leave a guest book out for our renters to write in, in case they're moved to leave messages for us about their stay at Oyster Haven.  One family who stayed here in 2024 said that "this place now houses part of our story." Ours, too!  Another recent renter wrote, "We came here for our grandson's wedding, but instead found heaven on earth. Staying here was a dream come true..."  I know just how she feels!  Seeing our string of Pearls playing together on the beach is a complete and utter joy for me, a proverbial dream come true.  (As is watching them play Monopoly at the kitchen table.  Or  being amazed by the intricate "box village" they build out on the lawn, using the big cardboard boxes that our new Adirondack chairs came in--which thankfully, we didn't destroy before they got their hands on them!  It's all joy.  So. Much. Joy!)

[Sigh...] I feel so incredibly blessed to have all these people to love, and that my husband and I are able to give them this one heavenly week together every summer.

Phew!  I did it!  I wrote a post!  And maybe I'll be back again before too long.

God bless you, dear readers.