An ambulance picked up my mother-in-law this morning after she had trouble breathing.
Here we are, on vacation with a bunch of my in-laws and some of their families. As if there's a good time for a family emergency.
But what I saw humbled me in new and profound ways today: My father-in-law and his two sons and two daughters (including my wife) are with my mother-in-law in a hospital an hour away. Tomorrow evening, when I get home from this vacation, they will be over four hours away. They won't be coming back to the resort tomorrow, when we were slated to go home. Instead, they will stay with their mother as doctors work to stabilize her. So my mother-in-law's siblings, their families, and my wife's siblings' spouses all pitched in to clean the resort room and pack the father-in-law's car. My father-in-law and his children returned from the local hospital just long enough to say their goodbyes, bring us up to speed, and make their way to the hospital an hour away.
Later, as I sat by the pool and helped my in-laws' spouses watch their kids, I realized something: I was part of this family. What I had in common with the other would-be strangers around the pool was that we had become part of this family. We have married into it. In my fellow strangers' case, we had added children to it. Taking the kids to miniature golf, ordering pizza for them. Despite my railing against the notion of collectivization, what occurred today was just that. Nobody simply took care of his or her self. We pitched in and got it done together. As the only collective that ever comes close to truly working: a family.
This evening, the clanging bells of the ice cream truck summoned children from around the resort like moths to a flame. I took a picture and texted it to my wife. Her reply? It was just the pick-me-up she and her siblings needed.
So tonight I close with a prayer for my mother-in-law: That she may recover quickly and enjoy many more years with her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.
