My Poor Friend

I have a wonderful friend who has been a special person in my life for the better part of 8 years. She and I were pregnant together with our second children, 2 months and a day apart. She was the one who kept my Big Girl when my Little Girl was born, and she kept my Little Girl when my father-in-law died. She's always been there for me in a BIG way.

This past Saturday, as she was preparing to cook some french fries for her family for lunch, she had a grease fire in her apartment. At first the pan was just very smoky, and she tried to take it outside. On her way to the only door out of the apartment, it burst into flames. The door was locked, and she tried to unlock the door, meanwhile, her right hand and forearm were burning. She couldn't get the door unlocked quickly enough, and she dropped the pan. For a moment, the entry hall was all flames from the falling pan of burning grease. Both her feet and legs were burned from the splatter. When firefighters and paramedics came, her husband had already put the fire out, but they did take her to the hospital to treat her burns. Today she had another appointment to find out what the treatment plan will be. If it's bad enough for a skin graft, that's BAD news. But either way, it's going to be a tough road to recovery for her. In the mean time, she has no real use of her right hand. I went over there yesterday to help out. I made lunch for her family, tried to teach her husband how to put her hair in a pony tail, typed some e-mails for her, just anything I could do for her while I was there. The worst of it is that they're planning to move out of town at the end of the month. I was already pretty bummed about them moving away, but now to have this happen just before... Maybe she'll have to come back to town for on-going treatment. That wouldn't be so bad. I'd love to have house-guests!

This weekend my dad mentioned Billy Joel's "And So It Goes," so that song immediately jumped into my head. The version of that song I carry in my head is the King's Singers arrangement as recorded by the group I was in back in college, One Voice. Memories...