Perspective February 28, 2013

I have been thinking about perspective for some time now.

It started when I went to order a new pair of glasses. It was the most ridiculous purchase ever – I already had a perfectly acceptable pair that I just didn’t like. I was out shopping with E, who needed a new pair, and while I was waiting for him, I tried on a pair of frames. I fell instantly in love.

I thought about it for a few days and when I still just couldn’t quit thinking about them, I knew I had to have them. That’s my qualifier for any really selfish purchase…. IF I have the money and IF I still want them after walking away for a few days, I know it’s not a purchase I will regret. So I tapped into my private rainy-day-slush fund (ok, so tapped isn’t quite right, depleted might be a more accurate choice) and bought them for myself.

I waited and waited and waited for them to come in. It was going on the far end of the 7-10 business days the optical shop promised and I kept checking my phone… did they call yet? No? Ok. Thirty minutes later… did I miss a call? It was ridiculous. I knew it was ridiculous! But I was soooo excited for these glasses to come in. These glasses were going to be SO AMAZING and so cute and make me feel so happy!

I walked down to the cafeteria to get some lunch and I heard a voice call out my name. As I turned in response, I recognized that voice and inwardly sighed a bit. It was a woman I had worked with a year or two ago who had had cancer. She and I had gotten through all the employment-related mess that treatments and absences bring. Now, after all was said and done, whenever I saw her she emphatically wanted to hug me and talk.

I am a hugger. I really am. I am a big fan of hugging and showing those you care about that you care – it’s just that… in the cafeteria, everyone is watching. And when you are an HR girl, you just can’t quite be a huggy person. And especially not at work. With your employees. The next thing you know, someone’s claiming favoritism, or harassment or God-only knows what else. Plain and simple, it’s just not acceptable for an HR girl to be hugging. People don’t even like to be caught talking with HR people, let alone hug them by the salad bar.

So she calls my name and I sigh, because I know that today is going to be one of those big, public hug-days and I kind of wish I could’ve waited another 30 minutes to decide to walk to the cafeteria. But as I turn and catch a glimpse of her face, something stops me in my tracks. She just looks off.

“Hi,” I greet her as she comes up to me. I’m searching her face to see what’s going on. She offers me a weak smile and reaches out her arm into a half hug. I hug back.

“How are you doing?” she asks and I quickly mutter a dismissive reply, pushing her question away. Her face tells me this is no time for water-cooler chatter. She started to talk and then she choked on her words, breaking off into silence.

I took her back to my office where she sat down and told me that she had just gotten a call. When her doctor was doing some routine followup with her, he found a “suspicious” spot. A “suspicious” spot for a cancer survivor is not an ok thing to have. Suspicious means Danger!! Danger!!, and a much bigger-badder danger than it would mean for a non-cancer survivor.

She stared down at her knees and said softly and quietly, “I can’t do this again.”

So I did the only thing I could do; I pulled HER into a big hug, and I held her as she sobbed.

I don’t know what you say in those moments. So I didn’t say anything at all.

When she left my office a while later, and I ventured back down to the cafeteria to get my forgotten lunch, I thought about my call. Here I had been anxiously waiting for a call about a stupid pair of GLASSES… an idiotic, selfish, vain THING, a PURCHASE… and meanwhile, on the same floor in the same building, another girl was waiting for a call about whether her CANCER was back. We were both anxiously watching our phones; but from completely different angles.

Talk about putting things into perspective.

How much time do I really spend worrying about, thinking about, exerting precious time on… things that matter not one tiny little bit? When I sat on my laptop all last night working my SECOND job, as Little One watched repeated episodes of Dora and climbed into my lap and I got mad because he accidentally caused me to send an email to a whole contact list instead of one person… how ridiculous. How completely unimportant.

I need to readjust those new glasses of mine, and hope that I can keep some perspective on what’s really important.

It doesn’t matter whether you think life is half full, or half empty… it’s recognizing the precious gift of having a glass to begin with.

Cheers, my friends.

Rockstar Ronan and beauty in the world September 7, 2012

One of the things I’ve talked about since this blog began is Rockstar Ronan, the beautiful little boy who died last year of neuroblastoma.  In fact, his mom’s blog is one of the things that got me onto WordPress in the first place.  I followed his journey daily, and then when he died, I cried along with the hundreds of other followers that have lived his story through his mama’s words.   I still check in on his mama’s blog occasionally, and I follow The Ronan Thompson Foundation on facebook.

This morning, I awoke to the most beautiful posting on facebook.  Tonight there is a special TV telethon airing that is dedicated to raising cancer awareness and funds for cancer research.  It is called Stand Up To Cancer and there are countless celebrities that will be performing during this telethon.  But… a huge lump wells up in my throat as I type this… Taylor Swift has written a new song, just for baby Ronan.  She titled it “Ronan” and she is singing it tonight on the telethon, for the first time ever.  For that sweet baby boy.  For his grieving mama. For his brothers that lost their sibling.  For all the hundreds of thousands of children who fight the disgusting monster in the night known as cancer.  For everyone.

You can find the article about the telethon and Taylor Swift here.

His mom said once that when this was all over, she was going to do something big.  Something HUGE.  Like get Pearl Jam in concert.  I’m summarizing here; it was something about Pearl Jam and I’m not taking the time to go scour the blog to find out specifically what she said.  It’s irrelevant.  The point is, MY GOD, look what she’s done.  Her beautiful baby boy is creating MAD AWARENESS.  His name will forever be known.  His story will forever bring awareness.

Thank you, Taylor Swift, and bless you, for being such an angel.

And Maya, if you’re reading this, Don’t Stop Believing.  

My heart is heavy, and full, with love today.  There is so much good in this world.

Today is a strange day August 9, 2012

Today is a strange day.  The word CANCER has been popping up all day.  That is always frightening to me, because I always wonder why.  My life is filled with too many coincidences and how-strange-I-was-just-thinking-of-you (or that) moments to not be worried when it seems like I’m finding this word everywhere I turn. And of course, although I try to fight and spread awareness and donate to finding cures for childhood cancers, I cower from the mere thought of it.  Of any cancer, hurting my loved ones or myself.  So when it’s repeatedly throwing itself in my path today, I have to stop and take notice.

It started when I checked Facebook this morning.  A wonderfully talented girl that I knew once upon a time lost her father to cancer this week.  She is a blogger, and she usually writes poetry about her experiences in coming to grips with the fact that her child has Fragile X syndrome.   This week, however, her focus is of course changed and she’s talking about her father and her loss of him.  She wrote this wonderful essay on her father’s lack of anger at the cancer that was slowly eroding his body.  She says that he said “Why?” when asked if he was mad about it.  Because why would he be, with this beautiful life he’d had, this wonderful family, these great experiences? 

Please check her out, it’s worth it, I promise.  The posting I talk about above was “Are You Angry”, but this… this is beautiful…

http://xmarksmyheart.blogspot.com/2012/08/our-walk-to-remember.html 

When I went to find the site address for you, her poem brought tears to my eyes, so I decided to share it instead of the link I was originally going to.   So circling back to her father’s lack of anger, his belief that he had had it all…

My husband and I have talked about this a few times recently.  I’ve personally felt this way for a long time, but to hear him say it to me was immeasurably good for my soul.  We have it all.  Honestly, we do.  We are healthy, we have food on our table, we have three healthy, happy children, and we LOVE and ARE LOVED.  Is there anything else that we could possibly need?  No.  Would it be nice to have a vehicle made in the last ten years and new carpet and enough money to buy pretty clothes and all the shoes in the world?  Sure.  But would I choose that over what I have?  Never in a million years.  If I DID have lots of money, what I’d really want to do is give some of it away to fight things like the ugly “c” word we are discussing here today.

And of course… if I died tomorrow, I would be sad.  I would be sad because I don’t want to miss out on all that is ahead of me.  But all that I’ve had??  That is enough.  It is enough.

And then, I happen to stumble upon a news article about a girl, who is 13, just barely older than my E, who is fighting neuroblastoma and now discovers she has preleukemia cells as well.  This girl has a video blog about fighting her cancer and how to be beautiful without her wig.  She has mad skills with makeup (eyeliner, sweetheart, teach me how to put on eyeliner like you!) and a peaceful, poised outlook on life.   In her videoblog, she is trying to comfort YOU, the watcher.  Darling girl, if only there were more people like you.  What a beautiful place this would be.

Please say a prayer for this wonderful child.  One of the comments someone wrote on her blog was “the world is a better place for having had you in it” and I wholeheartedly agree.   Her parents must be so proud to call her theirs.   

Check her out:      http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1slESfh_3M0

It simply can’t rain forever. April 5, 2011

“It can’t rain forever.”

My favorite blog site had this posted in a picture, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.  Her posts, which are regarding the struggles her young child is going through, always inspire me.  It was her blog site, in fact, that prompted me to come here and begin my own.  If she can move me every day, if I am taking the time out of each day just to see what she’s got to say, perhaps I have something that someone out there might be interested in as well.

Today I have been smoke free for two days.  Not a big feat, that.  Not really, anyway, but I still feel a twinge of pride that tomorrow will be three days.  I’ve heard that by day twelve the cravings stop.  To be 100% honest, I have never really struggled with that.  Which is why I have no idea why I continued to smoke except that I just genuinely like to do it.  The problem is that I have my babies, and I don’t want them to grow up thinking that it is ok, or normal.  And I don’t want them to be that person who stinks, or who is embarrassed to have others in their car, or that people look down on.  I don’t want them to smoke, period.

But even more importantly, I don’t want my children to be in the position of my brother-in-law right now.  His father, who is probably in his late fifties, was admitted to the hospital on Friday with pneumonia.  They did an x-ray and found a mass in his chest, and then followed the x-ray with a CT scan.  He was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer on Saturday, and they talked of starting chemotherapy today.  I don’t want my children to be that young man in the room listening as he hears this devastating news about his parent.  I am tired of feeling like this choice that I make, to smoke, will very likely be something that I horrifically regret some day.  So I’m changing it.  I want to be the girl that doesn’t smoke – that just did it, just QUIT.

My blessings were abundant today.  To begin with, my darling little one woke up at almost 4 in the morning running a fever of 103.  This meant I got to stay home with him today, and any day that I am home with my children is a gift in and of itself.  He took a long nap this morning, and this in turn meant that I got a long nap too – hooray!!  I’m such an addict of naps.

I also got some cleaning done today, vacuumed the glass off the deck after the hail storm the other day (hadn’t realized that the hail had shattered the lights on my deck, and the glass was too tiny to be able to sweep), and got to read a little bit.  I wish all my days could be like this, minus the fever of course.  And after all of that, he laid in my arms and we snuggled and watched tv for over an hour.  THAT is a blessing – I can truly say he has never, ever snuggled for that long.  Right now he is snuggling with his daddy, drinking Pedialyte, and SINGING at the top of his lungs to his pacifier.  That little voice is so precious.

As this is my first post, I think I will sign off for now.  I may be back later – let me see what other blessings I can find tonight and I will share soon.  Hugs and blessings to all of you.  Goodnight!