Anyone who is a regular reader will know by now that my son is a long-distance lorry driver and so is away during the week. He usually leaves on a Sunday afternoon so that he can arrive at his first destination promptly, hitting the floor running, so to speak.
Last week, I received a rather scary text from him at 7.30 Monday morning. His partner was suffering from chest pains, had called 111 and paramedics were on their way to her. Could I please make my way to their home? They have three children. By the time I arrived, the ambulance was outside the door, the paramedics were doing their tests, the children were in various stages of dress and mood.
Last week, I wrote about the eldest grandchild’s reaction to the situation, this week I’d like to tell you about my grandson’s response. He is seven and a different character altogether.
When I arrived at the house, he was nowhere in sight. Ambulance lights were flashing outside, the paramedics were doing all sorts of tests and asking all sorts of questions, the eldest granddaughter was in tears. He was upstairs in his underpants playing on his tablet. Amidst chaos and confusion, frantic fear and frozen shock, he was calmly pressing buttons, hoping (I think) that he could stay under the radar and no one would realise he should be going to school. He doesn’t like school – well, that’s not entirely true – he doesn’t like the bits between registration and break or between break and lunch or between lunch and home time. PE and forest school is tolerable, but the rest? Nah!
Well, once the patient was on her way to hospital and the tears had been wiped from eldest granddaughters’ eyes, I located him and called him down. An alarm went off. ‘Oh!’ he informed me with a victorious tone, ’that means we should have left for school, it’s too late now!’
‘Right Mister, you’d better find your clothes and get ready.’
No reaction. He retrieved the tablet and started to press buttons. I moved to take it. ‘You need to find your clothes.’ No response. I slid the tablet from his fingers and bent down to make eye contact.
‘Where are your clothes? The ambulance has taken Mummy to hospital to make her better. You need to get dressed so that you can go to school.’
With a sigh he got up. He reached to take his tablet from me. I shook my head. ‘Where are your school clothes?’ He pointed towards a heap in the corner. I shuffled through the clothes and found the white polo shirt and handed it to him. I hunted for two socks. The ones I found may have been a pair once but one looked a little longer than the other. I handed those to him. I looked round. He was trying to negotiate one foot into one sock as he fiddled with a car with his other hand. ‘Concentrate! Focus on what you’re doing….’
I turned a pair of school trousers the right way round conscious that time was ticking on. ‘What time does school start?’ I asked hoping this reminder would prompt him into urgent action at the same time trying to be sensitive to the fact that he had just witnessed his mum going off in an ambulance.
‘Grandma if it’s eight o clock, it’s alright. If it’s nine o’clock, we’re late,’ he said nonchalantly.
‘Where’s your school jumper, sweetheart?’
‘Dunno’
‘Ohh kaaay. Where did you have it last?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Can you give me a clue? What am I looking for here?’
‘I think it’s red….’ I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, well aware that the school colour was red.
More hunting. No jumper.
In the end, he went without and we asked at the school if he could maybe borrow a spare from lost property.
Grandson is laid back even in a crisis, unaware of the panic around, reminding me of the story of Jesus, asleep on a cushion in the boat as his disciples faced a storm (Mark 4:38). The disciples, several of whom were hardened fishermen, were all too aware of what could happen. They were afraid that the boat would be swamped and they would drown. ‘Don’t you care?’ they asked Jesus. Jesus calmed the storm. ‘Don’t you have any faith?’ he answered. Its hard when we’re in the middle of a ‘storm’ to lay back, let go and let God. But God does care and He is in control.
May we have the faith to call to You in the storms of life, knowing that You love us and will be with us till the end, Amen.