every day

Day one radiation done.  They said it went perfectly.  We take heart in the care-giving of our medical team and in Andy’s strength and ability to heal.

Leading up to treatment, we had several days of family and fun.  Camping out in Grampy’s yard for his birthday celebration and plenty of great time with cousins, in the pool, playing ball, slumber partying on the floor at Bill and Mary’s.

Through it all there lingers a sense of something surreal.  How everyday-ness carries on. We small talk, and eat cake and ice cream (well, some of us do), we ride our bikes, watch the fireworks explode in the sky, remind kids to bring in towels and hang up suits, we gas up the car, and answer the age old question “are we there yet?”.  But underneath it all there is that weight that we haven’t quite grown used to.  It surfaces for each of us differently, I think. For me, that lightening bolt of recognition, the literal zing that takes my breath away, when I remember as I watch Andy play ball with his brothers, that our family has cancer.

Iris told me the other day that she wants our family to be normal again.  (She doesn’t know yet that we never really were).  But I get it.  Shit yeah, I get it.  “Me too kiddo”, I think.  But instead I ask her to remember the good things that have come to us in the last year and half.  More time together as a family, closeness with our friends, gratitude for all that is good and beautiful in our lives.   She’s not buying it.  Not yet.  I can only hope that one day she will.

What a place we find ourselves.  Grappling with the yin and yang of this life.  How beauty and laughter can exist right alongside loneliness and fear.  Are our hearts big enough for it all?  Huge concepts to tackle at anytime in our lives, much less at 9.

And so tonight I tuck them in with our every-night bedtime blessing.  I hold them literally, and then silently in my heart as they fall asleep.  And I pray that my own bumbling will show them a way that is somehow full of strength and hope. I pray that every day they can find a way to balance worry with joy, fear with love.  I wish it for us all.