I'm reading my post below, and I try to see the day through different eyes. I know Halley well, count her among my blog friends. And one of her most amazing qualities, I think, is the way she looks at life as hers for the taking. So today, with Jenna here crying over her headache, clinging, needing, staggering about, I asked myself, what would Halley do?
If it were Jackson instead of Jenna, Halley would make a tent out of the bed covers and climb in with a flashlight and read Scooby-Doo mysteries, bringing cheese and crackers and a bottle of carbonated flavored water or green Kool-Aid with her. She wouldn't worry about crumbs; she'd take care of that later. They'd climb into imaginary mysterious worlds of vampires and mummies, of intrique and detective work, and just now I can hear Halley yelling, ZOINKS!
If Halley's house were a mess today, she'd invent a cleanup crew with pajama-wearing Jackson, and they'd put on pirate hats and go off on a hunt for burried trash, jumping out from behind walls to surprise one another with an old dixie cup or random dirty sport sock.
For lunch she'd make something out of nothing. Peanut butter club sandwiches, stacked high, alternating flavored jellies, grape then strawberry, and then peanut butter, bread and maybe a few crackers. She'd dance around the lunchtime totem pole and Jackson would hug her waist and laugh.
Naptime would be delicious. She and Jackson would curl back up in Halley's bed, she'd rub his straight dark hair and tell him the story of when she was a little girl, and sick, and how she dreamed herself to far off lands to ride unicorns or great giant kernels of blue popcorn.
For dinner, Halley would order out, then get dressed up for the delivery boy, just to shock him. Maybe she'd put on grannie glasses and a doudy robe and fuzzy slippers, and speak only French when he rang. Or maybe she'd let her flowered Victoria Secret camisole float, just barely, above the button on her pajama top to see if she could catch him gazing. While she was waiting, she'd blog about it, one of those big Halley headlines: Delivery Boy, Ring This Belle.
She and Jackson would slurp up lomein, in a contest, seeing who could slurp the longest noodle the fastest. Jackson would laugh, and Halley would say, "STOP IT! You're going to make a noodle come out of my nose!" And they'd fall off the kitchen chairs giggling.
At bedtime Halley would tuck Jackson in and lay down beside him, sing him a church song to let him know that everything, absoultely everything, will be just fine. And after he drifts off, Halley would call a blog friend and say, "AAAH! Jackson was home sick. We played pirates and picked up trash and told stories, and you should have SEEN the guy who brought our Chinese dinner, this young boy, he was just so CUTE!"
And I'd smile and tell her she's a damn laugh riot, and secretly I would wonder how it is that Halley can turn any day, any ordinary day, horrible day, into an adventure, into a party, into a Halleyday.
