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"It seems that the Tuesday before I left for Nate&amp;#039;s most magical party, my mother had taken a tumble she hadn&amp;#039;t wanted to tell me about. She was settling herself into her cockpit chair, the green chair in her sitting room from which she runs her world. She injured her back in this fall, and scraped her arm rather badly. Her skin is tissue thin.  She hadn&amp;#039;t wanted to tell me, because she didn&amp;#039;t want me to hesitate about my long held plans. She didn&amp;#039;t want to worry me, because she assumed she was fine. That this was just an incident and not another trip to Bedbound Lane. Yet there is this intrinsic system built into mothers&amp;#039; and daughters&amp;#039; voices. We hear when things aren&amp;#039;t right. My daughter asks me what&amp;#039;s wrong practically every time I answer the phone. A few days into my trip, things weren&amp;#039;t right at all. My mother was admitting she felt terrible. This does not usually happen. My mother reminds me of the Spartan boy who hid a stolen fox inside his cloak and let the animal gnaw him to death rather than show weakness. I am set to come home on Monday, the day after Disney. I know she will be OK until then, and even better once I land in the unmagical world of home. While we gather all our stuff to leave Disneyland, Nate discovers he&amp;#039;s lost Kermie, a spindly Kermit The Frog doll he got from a Disney store. Lost stuffed animals must not be new territory to the hotels surrounding the amusement park. My son-in-law called, recited the room number, and learned Kermie had been tangled up in bed sheets and taken to lost-and-found. He would be waiting for us at the front desk. If I could imitate Nate&amp;#039;s voice here I would (and probably annoy you) but I will just quote him on our bus ride back to the hotel. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m coming to rescue you, Kermie!&amp;quot; That was all I could think of on my plane ride home. Mag took me to the airport early, early, but I could not get a quicker flight. I have a slight eccentricity on plane rides. I used to get sick every time and now I don&amp;#039;t, because I wear a surgical mask. I wear an eye mask, too, to block out any light. I introduce myself to my seatmates, assure them I am not contagious, just cautious, flip down my eye mask and isolate myself from the world. I try to settle into plane drone, the white noise of human molecules and steel hurtling through space. I have the jingle jangle music of small boys in my head, and the sounds of plastic toys dropped on hardwood floors. I see every Disney character doing 3D lightshows, while I wander further into blackness. Once I am covered like this, wrapped in a blanket and swaddled, I can finally hear just one voice inside me. It sounds remarkably like Nate&amp;#039;s. Kermie, I&amp;#039;m coming to rescue you. Mom, I&amp;#039;m coming home.   D.G. Fulford is the author of Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom, written with her mother Phyllis Greene. She is also the co-founder of TheRememberingSite.org. You can find her at DGFulford.com.  Photo credit: Marcia Smilack "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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