Five weeks in
I’m not sure when I’ll stop counting, but it’s been five weeks since his diagnosis and every day I swing between feeling like it’s fresh and raw to it being so familiar and integral it’s like he’s always been this way. I suppose it’s both.
He’s still so normal. I look at him and it’s hard to believe there’s a savage disease roiling his precious body, attacking his blood and bone like wheat before a cloud of locusts; he’s weaker at times, and he has his first scars, but he’s also just a toddler who wants to run and yell, test limits and feed that growing brain with hypotheses and rules to be broken and experimental results. I’m frequently heartened when he behaves like an asshole – a healthy reminder that he is, in fact, two-and-a-half doing things that two-and-a-half-year-olds do. We can’t blame everything on cancer, nor can we fear it taking what it cannot: his body may be under siege and in need of constant care, but his mind and his soul have to be fed just as well.
This weekend was another highlight, spent together doing what comes naturally – enjoying this beautiful region we live in. Saturday mornings we always visit our friends at the Stockton Market for a pastry from Sweet Melissa’s and a coffee and great conversation with Ed from Urbane Tea. We picked up my truck and took it over to the Tuckamony Farm where we found a beautiful Korean Fir to take home for a Christmas tree. After dropping the tree off, we headed to Buckingham Friend’s School for their Snowflake Festival and then eventually back home to decorate our tree.
Sunday was just as lovely – an early grocery run let us stay home all day in a cozy house, cooking a feast of latkes and pot roast and apple crisp. Ina, Graham and Artie came over in the afternoon and we dined and enjoyed the company until the kids began to show signs of tiring.
This week brings a major milestone with it – tomorrow we find out how his first month of treatment left him, and what the next three to four months will look like. All we can do is stay flexible, and hopeful, and grateful for all the time we have as a family to be together.
