Someone To Watch Over Me

I have great parents. This past week, while I was out of town, Mom set up my kitchen, my step-dad fixed a leak in a sink, and Daddy fixed my dryer. That last one is probably the most impressive, considering my dad died ten years ago.

I swear I'm not crazy.

I mean, at least not about this.

If you've been keeping up, lately, you know that Thomas and I have had a...let's call it "fun"...couple of weeks. First, we moved our ridiculous, bordering on obscene, amount of stuff out of our townhouse and into our new house--the house I grew up in. That was Saturday. On Monday, we headed to Atlanta for the better part of a week, which meant that we had a massive amount of laundry to get done on Sunday. Yay.

Thomas is the laundry-doer in our household. I (sort of) cook and do the brunt of the housework, and he lugs the heavy clothes baskets around. I think it's a fair trade-off. Anyhoo, he washed the first load, went to put it in the dryer...and the "start" switch came off in his hand, the backing falling down into the machine.

[EXPLETIVE DELETED]

This had happened before, a few years earlier. Thomas tried to fix it. My step-dad tried to fix it. Heck, I think Curt and I may have tried our hands, too. Eventually, a professional had to be called in to get the darn thing working again. This time, we didn't have the time or money for that luxury, so Thomas spent the better part of an hour trying to put the pieces back together, but there was absolutely nothing he could do to make the machine turn on. Eventually, we just called it a night, Thomas set the pieces in place (just to keep from losing any parts), and I asked Mom if we could borrow her dryer. 

Fast forward to Thursday. I called Mom to let her know we were on the road, headed home. She told me that she'd been over at the house all week, puttering around and putting up odds and ends--God, I love this woman--and that my step-dad had taken care of a pesky leak. I thanked her (for both of them), and that's when she hit me with, "...and Brent said the dryer worked fine."

"Oh, good! So he was able to fix it?"

"No. It wasn't broken. He just walked in the utility room and turned it on."

No way. No [EXPLETIVE DELETED] way. I looked at Thomas, "Mom said the dryer's working."

"Oh, Brent fixed it? Cool. Thanks!"

"Nope. Said it wasn't broken to begin with. He just flipped the switch and it worked."

"...huh?"

Seriously. It's a machine. It didn't just get better.
"I just want to make sure I have that right. The dryer wasn't broken? Brent didn't fix it, but it works?"

"I'll check with him again, but I think that's what he said...[silence]...Yeah, it's fine. Didn't have to do anything to it."

"I think my brain just bluescreened."

It was about that time that Mom and I both realized what happened: Daddy fixed it.

This isn't the first time, since his passing, that something helpful, yet unexplainable, has happened. My dad was a protector. He didn't want his family to want for anything, and he'd do whatever was necessary to make sure we were safe, happy, and healthy. We're not entirely sure that part of his nature ever left us, so when something we can't figure out happens, we, half-jokingly, chalk it up to Daddy looking out for us.
The most notable occurrence (out of too many to count) was while I was in college. Rehearsals and sorority stuff had me in and out at weird hours, so Mom and I had a system: she'd leave the brand new alarm off when she went to bed, with the understanding that I would turn it on as soon as I came in at night. Well, one night, I flat-out forgot and just went straight to bed. A few minutes later, I heard those familiar beeps and thought to myself, "Thanks, Mom." The next morning, I apologized and thanked her for setting the alarm for me.

"You didn't forget. I heard you set it when you came in."

"No, I heard you set it after I got in bed."

We both looked at my brother, who was maybe four, not tall enough to reach the panel, and had no idea what the code was, or, for that matter, what the alarm was.

Daddy set the alarm.

Daddy fixed the dryer.

I think I'm going to love living here.