One Down, One to Go

Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We drove down to Flagstaff and saw Jordan graduate from NAU on Friday. My big plans for this milestone are that he can pay his own cell phone bill and car insurance. He has a job working on the fire crew in Bailey, Colorado until November, then he's heading back to Flagstaff to be a coach for the ski team. He earned a degree in International Affairs - do any of the above jobs have to do with International Affairs? I'm not sure since I don't know what that degree means. I keep asking him what he can "do" with this degree and he says, "Oh, lots of things." I guess fire fighter and skiing come under the "lots of things."

The week before he graduated I got a phone call, on a Sunday afternoon, from the Burn Center in Phoenix, Arizona. This is how it began, "This is Judy from the Maricopa County Burn Center and we have your son in our emergency ward. Now don't panic, it's not that bad."

Not that bad? What was she talking about? I always imagined those kinds of phone calls, you always do, especially when your kids start driving. One time when Jordan was still in high school we got a call from an extremely nice police officer in Denver, at 1 in the morning, letting us know that he had warned Jordan about an incorrect right turn but he thought we should know about this and perhaps talk to him. Talk to him? I didn't even know he was in Denver. I thought he was spending the night with his friend Derek, in Granby.

Apparently Jordan and his frat buddies were camping and he had fallen into the fire and burned his arms, hands and palms. He had some third degree burns on his arms, which is why he was in Phoenix. He had first gone to Flagstaff, they took one look and called an ambulance for a drive to Phoenix (I'm assuming they also checked to make sure our insurance would pay for this.) After my heart slowed down and I talked to Jordan, who was on quite a bit of pain medicine, I called my mother, who is a retired nurse and lives in Phoenix and she spent the next four days with him in the hospital.

He's okay and of course, since I'm such a great mother, I asked him if he had been drinking. Just a little, he said.

We got the bill yesterday......$84, 218.50, which is more than his college education, which took four years and this only took one night. Go figure. He now is worth more than our house and if I could figure out how to sell him and move to Bend, I would....