Notes from a Rookie Firefighter...February 1, 2009

Usually when my blog is silent for awhile it means I have a lot of things happening with my daughter, and for those of you keeping up with what's happening, I want to tell you how successfully the planets lined up yesterday.

It started with Friday not being a good day, and the end of a very long week. I so feel like I am in this all alone, and still have not taken that step to join a support group or other group to try to talk about the last two years.

You find friends sometimes in the oddest places, you know? Yesterday after work I got together at my firehouse with a member of our department that is in another firehouse. We are two of only four women in the town's fire department. We studied for our exam, hopefully happening this week, and in between she gave me really really good advice on how to handle some of the things my daughter has said and done...mostly said. She gave me such insight into my personality, and the person I want to be and the person I used to be. In between these insightful exchanges, we quizzed each other on fire behavior and incident command.

At one point, and this is funny, I started to choke on my coffee and then started to laugh. Well she got up and started asking me the same questions they taught us in the CPR part of our class at the Academy. That just made me laugh more. I said afterwards, imagine a call coming in to the firehouse, from the back of the firehouse, for a rookie firefighter, being saved by a fellow rookie firefighter. Yikes! It was just one of those days.

A few hours later I had to make the call to my daughter at the shelter and I was able to separate myself from the situation, and turn every one of her negatives into a positive. I don't know if she was listening at all, but my friend said teens won't act like they are listening, but deep down they are, and I pray I was telling her exactly what she needed to hear at the time to stay safe.

Thanks, A., and yes get me the application to join Office of Emergency Management. Guess that's my destiny too. Just will have to figure out how to tell the husband.