A cold, a shovel, and a ride home.

Home. Where rather than antiseptic and hospital staff, the smell of a vanilla candle and two large dogs greet you at the door. Where wood flooring replaces linoleum. Where your wife's famous chili warming on the stove replaces lime jello on a cafeteria tray. Where the snow falls lightly over the large pines rather than the cemetary across the street. Where the low murmur of the television and family chatter replaces medical terminology and the incessant beeping of some machine. Where a king size bed and fresh laundered sheets replace the industrial starch of a hospital bed. Home. There truly is no place like it.

So today, as the snow blows and drifts, my dad makes the short trip from the hospital to our warm cozy house on 19th street. My sister struggles to shovel the driveway. She wants to pick up my dad. Be the one that brings him home. But, whether it's due to a mechanical failure or the fact that no one besides my dad has ever used it, the snowblower won't start. A neighbor graciously helps plow out the driveway before alas, he becomes stuck in one of the drifts. My mom peers out of the window, wanting only for all of this to be over. Ready to cry because she just can't do it anymore. She's sick, sniffling and tired, with a cold that just won't seem to quit. She's watching my sister curse at the snow and reminds her of the temper tantrums we would throw as kids. This makes her smile. But she just wants to cry.

I call her. She tells me her troubles. From the snow to my dad to the dog hair that just keeps accumulating even though she's vacuumed twice. As I sit on my patio, basking in the sun and seventy degree weather that graces southern Texas, I just want to be there for her. For them. And I can't help but laugh. She yells at me. Stop lauging at me, she says. Which makes me laugh even more. Because it really isn't funny. But I can't do a thing and I just want to hold her hand. So I laugh, tell her she's got the worst luck. I tell her that I love her. That's all I can do. And I think that's all she needs.

So as my sister calls Mother Nature a filthy whore, and my mom searches for a Kleenex and cold medicine, and my dad is driven over snowy roads by a friend's kid, I sit here and laugh. They can't see it now. But they are lucky. Because we have today. And that's all that matters.