Last night one of my twins was sad. Her head hurt and she was weepy. I have a knee jerk reaction to headaches and upchucks that renders me paralyzed. My track record for curing them has been so pathetic I am nervous to try.

But I offered to massage her neck, and moved on to the balls of her feet. I knew there were specific pressure points but leaving her long enough to go look it up felt impossible. Besides that we had partially melted a chicken. 

The heat lamp in the coop takes the edge off the frigid nights and we have been using it lately. But the cord slid a bit while Aurelle was adjusting it and the bulb came down low enough to touch the little black Silkie named Miracle. She is as gentle as, well a  Silkie, and neither made a noise nor moved away. Aurelle noticed it and scooped her up. The poor thing had singed wings. It had the three of us upset, and perhaps contributed to the headache. 

I brought Hope a red drink, something John swears by that has mega vitamins in it. He also believes in spinach as staunchly as Popeye but Hope wasn't convinced. Then I offered to tell her a story. Being at the bottom of the Odhner clan they missed a lot of the shenanigans that happened in the eighties and nineties, and I pulled out legends like The Dollar Bills, and Punishments that Went Awry. She laughed until she cried. But then again she was crying before I started. It lead into a vent about how hard it is to have a brother with autism, and I listened. 

Astonishingly, the headache subsided. 

When a couple or person I care about is hurting in his or her marriage, sometimes I feel frozen. The notion that I could actually make a dent in the pain seems ridiculous, or as Ben likes to say, pompous. 

But maybe the details of what I do matters a tad less than the fact that I am doing something.