The Game Called Life

Previously published in the Coastal Illustrated, April 18, 2012

Life is hard. I just found out I am having another girl and no one seems too concerned that I am running out of room in my car.*  And it sure doesn’t help that I still haven’t paid off my student loans yet and now one of my pre-existing kids has decided she wants to go to med school after I paid ten thousand for a wedding reception so she could then elope with a struggling stand up comedienne that comes with an annual salary of five G’s, a double wide, and a flat screen TV.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night.

That’s why, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why my family likes to play Milton Bradley’s Game of Life right before bed.  It’s even getting to my nine year old.  She ended up paying so much money in back taxes she had one heck of a nightmare last night and had to spend the night wedged in our bed. 

But it got me thinking (as well as not sleeping.)  Is the Game called Life really a reasonable interpretation of the honest to goodness, real, breathing in and out, and putting one foot in front of the other thing it’s named after?

In some ways, yes, I think it is.   In life, just as in Life, it does seem more times than not, we close our eyes, spin the “metaphorical” wheel, and hope for the best.  Will we win the lottery, a TV game show, or five grand worth of free furniture?  No, probably not.  But see, there are all of these things out there we can’t control, like a recession, job loss, or medical bills, so we take three, five, ten steps forward-whatever we can get- and pray for the best.  It doesn’t seem fair.  But it’s all we can do.

Will we find a buried treasure or win the Nobel Peace prize?  Our odds are much better in the Game of Life than the real one, but in both, we have choices to prepare us for the “down the road” scenarios that will inevitably pop up.  Education, investments, spending wisely not frivolously, are all options for both that can better prepare us for life’s greater challenges.

But still, unforeseen circumstances happen all the time in the game and reality as well.  We might lose a hefty investment, have to take a pay cut due to no fault of our own, or maybe even be sued by one of your own family members.  All of these things happen in real life, but sometimes the responses seem to be the same as those thrown out around the game board: “It’s not my fault.  I can’t do anything about it.  It’s just life.”

Basically, suck it up….which are tough words to swallow.  So maybe this is where I think the two differ.  Real life is what happens when the rubber meets the road, when it’s no longer play practice, but the real deal.  And real life, unlike the game, should never be left up to chance.

When I was a freshman at UGA way back when, one of my favorite classes was a comparative lit class.  If I took one thing away from my studies that would shape the way I would look at life when I got out in the real world to live it, it would have to be reading Voltaire’s Candide. 

Voltaire was a French philosopher and writer during the seventeen hundreds, the period of Enlightenment, and is considered to one of the great thinkers behind the French and American Revolutions.  It’s true that our Founding Fathers were inspired by the very things we appreciate and practice now that were not available in Voltaire’s time that he advocated: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

In his satire Candide, Voltaire rejects the notion that everything happens for the best in the “best of both possible worlds.”  In the author’s own world at the time, great atrocities were dismissed by saying “it’s God’s will” or “fate” and no one could do anything about it except for smile and be optimistic it will all work out in the end.  What he concludes still sticks with me today, that in the end, like Candide, we must all “cultivate our garden” and not leave our lives up to chance.  In fact, we must all try and control our own destinies through hard work and persistence.  If you plant a seed and tend to it, it will grow.  Look at the seed Voltaire planted in his day and how we are all reaping its reward today over 250 years later.

For me, when life gets hard I think about cultivating my garden and about how impossible things can become possible.  No matter how many times I spin the wheel and how many spaces I more forward, it will always be up to me to figure out a way to get on down the road. 

My girl’s have taught me a lot while playing the Game of Life and our subsequent discussions of it before bed.  Whenever the Life tiled road diverges and you have a choice to take the risky path or the safe one, they tell me to take the risky one every time.  Some people think a safe path might be better they tell me, but it slows you down getting where you want to go every time.

For me, I think I’ll teach my girls something in return.   I am going to pick out a piece of earth in our back yard.  We can plant tomato seeds and fertilize and water them.

And see what grows.

   

*Writer's Note: No.  I am NOT pregnant! No baby on the way but thanks for all the well-wishes after this story came out in paper a few weeks ago!  This momma already has more than she can handle!  

A Mother's Mind is Mush

         previouly written July, 2010 for blog only

Mush has never been one of my favorite words.  Especially now, since it reminds me of all the things I have tried real hard to forget since my husband and I decided to procreate some ten years ago.  Things like strained peas, regurgitated peas, dirty diapers and the “stuff” under the car seats that can only be identified with a culture and a bio-hazard lab at the CDC.  I could go on, but I won’t, seeing as it could trigger something in my brain and make the memories of the mush come flooding back in. 

I don’t know what it is they do to you at the Maternity Ward, but the ID bracelets they tether you and your newborn to must have some sort of electromagnetic mind zapping device in them or something.   What else could single handedly erase (along with your privacy and the hope of ever fitting back into your size 26 jeans) every last one of your remaining brain cells?

Gone, like that.  Just when you need them the most, you’re no longer able to remember dates, times, appointments, ages, passwords, street addresses, birthdays, or names. 

“Is David feeling any better,” I ask my friend after I literally bump into her at the grocery store with my shopping cart.

“Oh, he’s fine,” she tells me as she waves a hand with what looks like one of those Henna tattoos all over it, but on closer inspection, seems to be her grocery list and a reminder to pay the power bill and get the oil changed.  “His fever broke the night it rained.”

See, events are no longer referred to by date, but by catastrophic events and changes in the weather.  For example, the summer of 2008 might be replaced by the summer it was so hot the air conditioning blew up and Junior broke his arm falling out of his bedroom window.

But let’s get back to the grocery.

Earlier in the frozen food section, I witnessed an exchange between a sweet, unsuspecting elderly lady and an overtired Mom with crazy hair pushing one of those stock car grocery cart thingamajigs with a bunch of tiny arms and legs sticking out of it.  It went down like this:

“What a cute little boy! What’s his name?” the elderly lady coos over the toddlers head. 

“I’m not really sure seeing as he’s number three, I think.  It’s Jimmy, Sonny, or Spot,” overtired mom tells her has she pushes s few stray hairs out of her face.  “ All I know is that he likes Lego's but I can’t give him the small ones ‘cause he’ll stick them up his nose, he throws up on long car rides, and he’s allergic to penicillin.  Basically lady, your guess is as good as mine.  Anymore questions?’

The elderly lady, as you can imagine, walked off in a huff.  But the one I truly felt sorry for was overtired Mom.  See, I feel her pain.  As a mom, we don’t have a lot of time for idle chit chat and reminiscing about things we can’t even remember anyway.  We have better things to do, you know, like keeping them fed, clean, and out of the ER.

I can’t remember my own phone number, but I know the number for Poison Control by heart, the genus and toxicity of all wild, liver-killing mushrooms, and how much laundry detergent one 50 pound child can drink before he’s gotta get his stomach pumped.

There does seem to be one exception to this mom’s mind is mush rule and that would be Martha Stewart.  Now don’t quote me on this, but if you open up her brain….I’m pretty sure you’d find a tea strainer or two, a rolodex, and one of those all purpose labeling gadgets.  Oh and let’s not forget Hilary Clinton, seeing as she’s got a whole village or something up there helping her plug away through life while trying to achieve world peace.  I just want to know where you get one of these villages, seriously y’all.  Can you download one from the internet or Pinterest or something?   Or better yet, make a bid for one on EBay?

Now in the case of my husband’s brain, you’ll definitively find some mush that’s accumulated on account of all the video gaming, beer drinking, and ESPN watching, but it’s quite cleverly concealed under a rather larger button, that when activated, makes it look like he’s paying attention to everything I’m saying when he’s really not.  He also has one of those selective hearing buttons, not to mention the ability to keep a whole strain of code intact, that when broken, reveals twenty years of stats for the SEC.

I can’t help it that I’m jealous of all the cool gadgets he has going on up in the big noggin of his, but what really burns me up is my kids (who haven’t hit the double digits by the way) are now smarter than I am.

“Where are my sunglasses,” I ask no one in particular, as I dump the entire content of my purse and the three kitchen junk drawers directly onto the floor. 

“Mom, really,” my youngest rolls her eyes without taking them off the Disney Channel and True Jackson VP.  “They’re where you always lose them….on top of your head.”

Here’s another example of my inferior intellect:

I find myself wandering around the house with a knot in the pit of my stomach, wondering aloud what it is I should actually be doing instead of burning holes into my Orientals.

“Mom, it’s Sunday,” my oldest tells me, as she holds out a list free hand.  It does, however, have a smudge of chocolate and the equivalent of a five pound bottle of glitter all over it.  “You’d better call your own mom or she’s going to get mad at you.  For that daily piece of advice, please dispense.”

Well, I guess I better get going so I can call my Mom and scrounge under the seat cushions for a dollar in change to pay off one of the precious little lamb chops that helped create the mush in the first place .  The problem is I just gotta remember where I left the phone.

Talk with you soon, if remember my blogger password, that is. 

A Graceful Plate

Previously published in Coastal Illustrated Dec.28, 2012

I’m full.

I don’t know about y’all, but I can’t eat another bite….well, unless it’s something chocolate.  The cocoa plant from the gods is simply, to me at least, something akin to a collapsible shoe organizer or a few of those stackable multi-sized Tupperware containers: a reason, if not a vessel, to hoard the things we love and can’t live without until a more appropriate time presents its self sometime in the future (you know, late at night).

With that said, it’s still quite the mystery why I can’t button my jeans, slip on my flats, or tighten my belt, because if you walked into my kitchen you’d think we were all starving to death. 

See, my pantry is full of high hopes, big ideas, and dashed dreams….a.k.a pretty much empty.

My refrigerator is a flaming (but yes, cooling) source of unattainable ambition; a Plexiglas cornucopia of wishful but fleeting aspiration.  A blue print for what could and might have been, but never was.  Or, on a lighter note just filled with strange and unidentifiable objects well into their prime and way past their expiration date.

And thanks to me (yes just me) that for all their thought and carefully consideration, most things that come home from the grocery store never meld into anything interesting, or for that matter edible.  Nope. Nada.  Zip.  Nothing worthy of a Bon Appetite cover, a neighborhood covered dish for that matter, or even a late night supper of scrambled eggs for two.

So if everything is still in there (my fridge that is) and sprouting “hair,” how can I possibly be full?

Aside from the microwaveable chocolate pieces found at your neighborhood grocery store that can be nuked in less than thirty seconds to a thick liquid and then dipped in anything non-perishable found around the house (i.e. broken Pringles, cracked candy canes, days old cherries, a half eaten Twinkie or Little Debbie cosmic brownie), I have just been eating everyone else’s food.

            Thank you Mike and Cindy for the gorgeous red velvet cheese cake, the one with the cream cheese frosting as thick as two abnormally large thumbs.  Much gratitude and kinship for Robert whose bottles of Silver Oak Cab (at almost nine years a grape and ninety nine calorie a glass) have kept me warm and toasty into the night.  Not to mention Gramma’s chocolate chip cookies made from scratch that were (in Gramma’s own words) “delish.”  I am telling you right now, you shouldn’t have…really…especially since you worship at the aisle of REAL butter and understand there is nothing more disappointing than biting into a cookie expecting all kinds of chocolaty chip, buttery goodness and getting a mouthful of raisins and a healthy dose of bran instead.  Well, played.

            I, on the other hand, learned from my own mother not only how to accessorize but how to read and enjoy a cookbook.

I will be the first to tell you how much I take pleasure in the prospect, the truth, of it all.  There is nothing more exciting than an evening in front of the fire place, in my yellow chair, reading a cook book as if Hemingway was watching the bulls in Pamplona: the matadors, the heat, the flesh, the wine at eight in the morning.  It’s almost the same thing. I read, feel, love, shop, buy, and take home my own interpretations of what I have read.  It’s just what I purchase never turns out the way it was intended. 

I like, Hemmingway, had grand plans for life using the most simplistic of measures.  Unlike Hemmingway, I never write anything down.  Or cook and eat it for that matter.

The red and green gelatin salad made to look like a Christmas tree that you’d find hanging out in my crisper, was actually a head of broccoli and bundle of asparagus that accidently got in the way of a spilled can of Chef Boy R Dee and ended up stuck there.

Next up is the chocolate cake in the back of the fridge that turned out not to be a cake at all.  Nope, just a pound of honey baked ham laying on top a slab of baby Swiss and a slice of bacon.  To make matters worse, the mayo jar looks like it will stay there ‘til the end of time, while for the life of me, I can’t ever find the ketchup.

I wish I understood all the intricacies of culinary creation: the thought and creative genius of time and place, taste and pleasure, then in turn, have the gumption to put it on a plate.

Maybe this past year, I might have had an empty pantry, outdated spices, and moldy cheeses, but as we start a year anew, let’s think like Hemmingway… seeing as he would advice no matter what we understand “courage is grace under pressure.”  Just as we should never take for granted all the possibilities life has thrown our way.

Paying bills, working, feeding our families, parenting, making a sense out of senseless and tragic things…..can be scary stuff.   But this year…yes… this year, let’s embody grace no matter what shows up on our plate.

            And be full.

Forty Isn't Old, If You're a Tree

Previously published in Coastal Illustrated Jan. 25, 2012

              It’s here. 

 The dreaded date of destiny.  The feared and ominous milestone.  The very day for which black balloons were made and filled with helium for.   That’s right, my fortieth birthday has finally arrived.

            People who have already reluctantly crossed, kicking and screaming, through this rite of passage have all sorts of sage advice.   Evidently, these are to be the best years of my life, these years that follow forty.   I have finally arrived at the point in time where my life will ultimately, at long last, begin.  I guess that means I haven’t really been doing a whole heck of a lot these past forty years, but you could have fooled me, because I’m so bone tired I can sleep standing up while holding two children, a bag of groceries, a 12 pack of Diet Coke, and 22 pound purse with a dog tethered to it.

I don’t buy it.  All of this heavy lifting, both physical and emotional, have to count for something.  And seeing as I still posses two children, a dog, three cats, and one husband, I don’t see it being all about “me” anytime soon.

Then, people who still have multiple years to go until they reach 40--- years that stretch out like miles and miles of white, glistening sandy beach under a bright blue sky--- tell me they are a tad bit envious.  They are looking forward to the day when they will finally feel comfortable in their own skin (even if hangs a little looser.) the day when they won’t let the little things bother them so much (because they won’t be able to remember what they are in the first place unless they wrote them down a scrap of paper that they will never again find, let alone be able to read without holding it three feet in front them.)

I don’t buy this, either.  Because I can see the fear behind their unlined eyes and hidden deep beneath their uncreased foreheads as they try and convince me it’s a good thing….turning forty.   It’s also because when they find out my birthday is imminent, they back away from me slowly, as if I harbor a terrible disease they don’t want to catch.  Come on, I really don’t think I’ll feel one bit wiser on January 28^th, than I was on January 27^th.  More than likely, I’ll just wake up a few hundred brain cells lighter and two and half pounds heavier with a crick in my neck and a cramp in my foot.

Next, according to my children, I don’t look a day over fifty-five.  Actually, I look pretty gosh darn good for someone who was born in the 1900’s…you know, like a totally different century and millennium, they like to tell me.  When they study history in school, I wonder if they picture me riding along side Paul Revere on a horse carrying a lantern or sitting fireside with Betsey Ross without a TV or Internet access, holding just a needle and some thread, drinking a cup of tea and eating bread.    It seems I have to remind them now and again that although I did not have a cell phone or a scooter that shoots out sparks and glows in the dark when I was their age, I didn’t ride the horse and buggy to the school and back, either.

Me, I don’t buy into the fact they really think I’m ancient, or old enough to have once hung out with Eleanor Roosevelt.  For a child, age really isn’t all that relevant.  For them, only one thing is certain, they just don’t want to grow up.  I guess we all still feel that way, especially as we approach a milestone birthday like forty.

I remember as a child I never gave turning forty a fleeting thought.  Why would I when I was busy catching fireflies to put in mason jars and playing hide and seek with friends under the canopies of rows and rows of Magnolia trees in the backyard?  Even though I loved those trees, I didn’t want to be like them, stuck in one place no matter how lovely, unable to move.  Who had time to grow old when there was so much to do? 

A strange thing happened to me right before my 40^th birthday.  I lost my voice, literally.  I woke up one morning and couldn’t talk.  It actually seemed kind of funny to me, if you want to know the truth.  As is maybe I’d talked way too much, yelled, laughed, sung, and squabbled my fair share away.  Maybe I had one too many heart-to- hearts and one-on-ones.  Maybe I had “chewed the fat” one too many times.

It’s a strange sensation, not being able to talk when you want to, voice an opinion, or communicate with the ones you love.  That’s why I was relieved when I woke up the next day- another day, another year, another decade older and not necessarily wiser- but I woke up never-the-less and my voice was back. 

I could conclude only two things.

I will never stop loving fireflies in jars and the safe canopy of a still Magnolia tree, but most importantly, it seems, I still have a lot more to say.   

There's No Place Like Home

Previously published in Coastal Illustrated Feb. 22, 2012

               Something is in the air. 

               And given the thick build up of frost on my windshield the other morning, it sure isn't spring.

               It all started a few weeks ago when our marsh cat, Otis a.k.a "Fatticus Rex" or simply, "Fatty," as we call him, finally achieved what he has been trying to do since we adopted him: escape.

               Now, I'm not sure if it's the dog who drags him around by his ear, sharing a litter box with Mirage, a.k.a “Scabby,” or the call of the wild, but as soon as the front door opens, he's out like a shot- or more like a furry, fuzzy, 90 lb ball of pent up frustration.

               Usually, we chase him.  This is probably poor parenting, because he really kind of gets a kick out of the five of us, including the dog, making weird sounds and throwing treats at him while crawling around on all fours next to the air conditioning unit.

               This last time, though, out of desperation, oh and a 7 p.m. dinner reservation, we let him fend for himself.

               As if I wasn't feeling bad enough about leaving the "little" guy out in the cold, I get a text on the way to the restaurant from one of my daughters at home with our sitter, Ali.

               "Mommy where is Otis??"

               Two seconds later.

               "Mommy where is OTIS!!!!!!!"

               And then to drive her point home, she followed up with 10 emoticons in varying states of distress.

               Here's what I texted back: "He ran outside. Bring food to porch, shake bag, and pour into bowl.  He will come."

               Sure enough, all it took was for her to open the door.  To say Fatty knows where his Fancy Feast is buttered is an understatement. 

               So, to my surprise, not two days had gone by and a similar situation unfolded right by the very same front door.  Only this time, it involved one of our two-legged creatures who, up until now, I couldn't pry off my legs, back, arms and feet.

               "So where are you going to go? You don't even have a pair of shoes on let alone enough money to get something to eat," I say to one of my daughters as she grabs for the door handle.

               Now, I am not sure what got her in such a state to run away with only a grocery bag filled with glow sticks and a pocket-sized flashlight to guide her.  Was it the dog she was supposed to help wash, Fatty and Scabby's litter box that was to be cleaned, or was it a call from her sister from the other room saying only babies watch Scooby Do? 

              

               I couldn't be sure because she blew past me, a whirling 90 lb dervish of clear lip gloss, green apple scented shampoo, and truck load of Claire accessories. I didn't go after her.  She’ll come back.

               I guess I just assumed she just wanted to get out of the house for awhile.

               Don't we all?  I took one look at my laundry pile and dirty dishes stacked in and around the sink and silently prayed for a divine intervention, or a spa trip...... whichever came first?  Beggars can't be chooser, you know.

               What is it about this time of year when we'd rather be any place but where we

are?

               Is it cabin fever, a lack of proper sunlight, or a meaningful holiday?  How come it seems we have reached a breaking point where we are all getting on each other's ever last nerve?

               Why do we want to run away and come back when everything is warm, and flowery, and candy-colored pink?

               My daughter didn't stay out in the cul-de-sac long.  I don't know if it was because she was cold or because I opened the door and silently held out a Little Debbie Zebra Cake and a DVD of Miss Congeniality 2.  But in she came.

               We popped in our movie, had a snack, and folded laundry.  

               And we thought of spring and all its possibilities.....cart wheeling through sprinklers in our bathing suits, skipping barefoot in thick, green grass singing to butterflies, sitting cross-legged in the warm sand building a castle fit-sort of- for royalty, planting bulbs in rich, dark dirt and watching them bloom, rocking on the porch with a good book and a cold drink, glancing up every once and awhile and saying a silent prayer because we are here and alive and beautiful, in our own right, every single one of us.......and all of a sudden we felt a bit calmer.

               Spring will come. It always does.

              Like the pull of the heart to the place where it's anchored, it won't take long to show back up, knocking on our front porch, asking to come in. And as we always do, we will open our door and, thankfully, let it all in.

Rough Waters

Previously published in Coastal Illustrated March 7, 2012

               When it rains, it pours. 

               This expression has turned out to be an almost weekly, if not daily, forecast for my life since last November.  I keep sitting around waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop, and not just drop by the way, but land on my head, knocking me out for the count.

               Recent events have not boded well for my psyche.  See, I am a worrier of Olympic proportions, a gold medalist, if you will; a champion like no other. If worrying was a contact sport like football, I’d be wearing the Super Bowl ring.

               I know it's not good for me, but I can't help it.  I worry if the oven is on and coffee pot is off.  I worry that a suspension cord will snap off the bridge as I drive across it, sending me into the water without ever ordering that window smasher thingamajig I saw on late night TV.

               I worry that reincarnation does exist, and it's John Candy, not my dog that is staring at me with a sheepish grin because I am standing there dripping wet without a towel.

               I worry about wearing leather, weather, traffic, micro-waving plastic, being too sarcastic and artificial sweeteners.

               So, yes.  I will go ahead and admit it.  I am a card carrying, certified sweater of life’s smaller stuff.

               But ever since November, I'd take the small stuff over the big any day.  I'd like to sit down and tell you everything, I would, but I don't have enough room, or time, or emotional fortitude.  I can share one story with you because it is one that had a happy ending.  What happened in the beginning and the middle though, made me miss the small stuff; kind of like how a little kid at camp on the first night misses his mom during a thunderstorm followed by hail.

               It all started two Fridays ago.  My cell phone started to ring that evening and since my "only call here with good news, please" voice mail message seems to be ignored as of late, I asked my husband to answer it.  It was my dad.

               As he told me the bad news, I didn't have time to retreat into a younger, innocent, naive version of me, curled in a ball, wanting her mommy, waiting out a storm.  This time it was my mom who needed me.  Her doctor had recommended a biopsy after her last mammogram.  The labs had come back a few minutes before the call.  It was cancer. And, yes, of course....I'd come home.

               It's funny how, even though you have an idea of where your life is supposed to go and you've clung on to all the wagers you made along the way to get there, there remains this feeling that, sure enough, a road block is coming up around the bend that will derail you from your well thought out, but precarious plan.  How can you forge ahead when there seems to be no way around?

               “I want to see my granddaughters get married.”

               “I know Mom, I want that, too.”

               Now, normally if I am leaving town, as a warrior worrier, I'd have dotted every

“i” and crossed every “t”, but I didn't have time to even worry about how the girls, and my hubby, and the dog and the three cats would get thought the week without me.  Honestly, I didn't have time to run to the store, wash their uniforms for school that week, let alone write their schedules down in a newsy style word document, then paste it on the fridge, my husband’s dash board, and over the bathroom sink.  I had to let it all go.  Like life...real life....We were all going to have to just wing it.

               That week in Augusta, with my mom and brother and Aunt Shirley is still kind of a blur of tests, MRI's, chest x-rays and consultations.  Though now, we know where every bathroom is located in University Hospital.

               "Where are we again?" I'd ask.

               "Out Patient," Aunt Shirley would say.

               “So I take a left next to the nurses’ station, a right at the waiting room, and go straight towards the soda machines, then a u-turn by the big clock and I’ll find the bathroom?"

               "No, that's Inpatient. Take three rights, jog down the hall, and look behind the elevator," she says. “I think you might get there in time if you leave now. Good luck and Godspeed. You’ll know where to find us when you're done."

               We did have one day off from the hospital, which was Wednesday.  We had lunch and did some shopping...anything to keep Mom’s mind off her upcoming surgery on Friday.  Mom had fun picking out a few outfits for my oldest to take with her to Camp Ebenezer, her first overnight school trip.  Aunt Shirley even found a new bathing suit, the first she ever bought that she "could fit a leg in and not displace the pool water" with.  She also bought Mom an inspirational book of short stories.

               In the intro, the author recommended the reader should lighten his or her load on their respective ship of life.  It would make for smoother sailing.  We all smiled at the advice, but I couldn't help be a doubter, maybe that’s the worrier in me.   That's all well and good, but if we’re talking in clichés, we might as well run with it.  The truth is it doesn’t matter how light you pack your ship, because you’ll never be able to predict bad weather.

               Mom was so incredibly lucky.  Sure, the week was hell, but she just put one foot in front of the other, and with humor and grace, made it through her surgery.  She had a lumpectomy and they took out the sentinel node for testing.  It, THANKFULLY, came back negative so her tumor never spread.  Six weeks of radiation and this will be behind her, but the tumor made a permanent mark.  It proved we don’t know how to give up, no matter what gets thrown at us.

               My husband, by the way, did a pretty good job sweating all the small stuff back here while I was gone.  He went shoe shopping and bought the wrong girl a new pair of shoes, the one who already owns five.  But he did find the missing tennis shoes of the girl who desperately needed them.  Who would have thought they would be, not under, but in the bed?  He also put them in the only clean school uniforms they had to play golf on Sunday, so he stayed up late doing laundry and forgot to pack their lunch that first day.  But they made it out ago and had a lot of laughs in the process.

               Me, I missed it, the normalcy of the everyday chaos.  I think that’s part of what life is all about.  I don’t think it’s wrong to sweat the small stuff because in the end, I am just happy to be here to sweat it out all the same.

               We might not know how to predict the weather, but we sure as heck know how to open up an umbrella and bail the water out of a sinking ship.

               We are stronger than we think even in the roughest of storms. 

              

               We are, quite simply, survivors.