So it is my birthday. 38 years young though my mom would tell you it was much less than that. As most of my esteemed circle of friends are experiencing, there are few thinks better than watching your kids turn the next age in the single digit decade where pure, unmistakable joy can be found in a bounce house or a swing delivering a birthday cake. Right there with you, Mom. I'm sure I will be lamenting the same thing 10-15 years from now with T&E ad nauseum. Maybe I already am. I don't think birthday wishes grow old, so there's always that.
What have I done? Not enough. Where have I been? Several places, yet vaguely not much of anywhere. What's next? I wish I knew. I want for that answer to sound more positive than it seems to read but it is not a hopeless statement meant to invoke a "whoa was me" feeling. No, there is more to today because the search for what's next is ever present and the drive to get to that next milestone is alive and well. There is a bit of a paradoxical nature to the search though. Wishes invoke hope and ambition with processes laid down to start trodding toward what I think is where we want to go...but along the way new wishes pop up and or the original wish metamorphosizes to something that better represents the current reality we are wading through. The point, at least for me, is not to get everything I ask for but understand how to keep progressing. How many people only throw one penny into the water fountain and then call it a career for coin-hucking. Not I. And certainly not Timmy or Ellie as evidenced by our lack of loose change in the car for the parking meter every SINGLE time. "No, wait DADDY...I just have to DO something one more time *kerplunk* HA! Hey Ellie, do you have another coin????" We have fed the fountain of youth a small fortune in this family, rest assured.
I keep myself pretty wrapped up in work. Teaching is non-stop. Lesson plans, lab preps, exploring new textbooks, the ever present requirement of professional growth and the evidence one must conjure up to prove we are in fact 'growing', and meetings upon meetings with students in and out of the classroom to figure out how best they can walk out for the final time in June with a level of understanding (i.e. a grade) we are both comfortable with. It's a 10 hour treadmill run to grind out one day and a dance party with water breaks the next. All this going on even into my beloved off season. My 16th high school soccer season of 4+ months concluded exactly a month ago. For the first time in my career, I coached a team on the final day of the season...and we walked away with a championship to our name. For all that I had wished the day would be some years ago when I began as a naive 22 year old, I was able to walk off the field with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. We did it. WE freakin' DID IT! Every single kid on that team...a team that had become closer than any group of boys I had the pleasure to do daily work with on the beautiful game....every kid deserved the recognition of walking out number 1 that day. And I can look back, likely years from now, realize the impact of several lessons learned through the course of a season that just had that feel of something special, and know that even if nothing in my tenure comes close to this again, I will always have 2014. Truth. But....
The weeks since have proven something I think I already knew. The wishes in the fountain still haven't been answered yet despite the pinnacle reached and it is probably best to get back to the grind or dance party...however you want to look at it. It was a momentous thing to accomplish but I haven't felt any less of the of the burden in the background. The grind is the familiar method of pushing forward, so celebrate for the day and off we go.
I've been relishing weekend time since. More so now than in a long while. I think that has a lot to do with Ellie being off treatment in the spring for the first time in almost three years. Saturdays and Sundays have no more shackles on them, even if they were the kind you could slip your hands out of the last few months of chemo. I go home on Fridays thinking about what is possible and what things could be sought after for the next 48-60 hours, you know with a little Pharrell Williams slapping in the car (please excuse my undeniable drop to student vernacular from time to time....if you can't understand 'em, might as well join 'em, right?!). It's a good feeling. The kids have so many activities now from riding horses to going to countless birthday parties to riding scooters to making chocolate chip pancakes (!!!). They will never miss a beat and rightfully so. All this and I still feel as though the peace I wish for is not as present as it should be.
The cancer world is the cancer world. There is no comparison. None. I catch these phrases every now and again in the hallways or in my search for what's going on in the world when I can sit down and tune in. There are a ton of misuses for the word "cancer". I even caught myself this year in the lockeroom describing how an unwanted trait brought in from the outside world to a team coming together could prove to be a "cancer". What? WHAT the hell am I talking about? The analogy is gross, inappropriate, and cannot be used. It is difficult to hear it put into play from outsiders trying to make an understandable point, but I'm very sorry....there is no way to use it outside of the world that created it. Cancer is something that you can do everything right with, everything and anything. You can go to the far depths of your power to enlist every weapon you have to combat it...and you still have zero control on whether it comes back or even takes someone from you. That's the difference between a stupid analogy and the real deal. Control. By the way, while I am on the subject of poorly worded phrases, I'll throw out there the ridiculous line of "A watched pot never boils" as well. Baloney, it doesn't. Go retake high school chemistry and then go to your room to think about what you've just said. I know that's unrelated completely to this paragraph, but if we're going to have these things in the english language, let's have some forethought. Nothing is "like" cancer except cancer. I wish I wasn't so acutely aware of that and I probably shouldn't let outside comments bug me...but they do.
I wonder if we are in the interim right now and that thought is scary if I let get to that point. That could be applied to a number of things I guess if you were to sit around waiting for the next tragedy to unfold. It doesn't consume me but it enters my mind from time to time. Am I making the most of the time right now so that I don't look back in a few years wishing I had done more? It is a tough question because the treadmill grind doesn't much care. Bills need to be paid, school events need to be had, the long off dream of being able to purchase a home in the Bay Area has to be pursued (despite inches at a time) and we have to find time to rest and recuperate or else I will be mailing the electric bill to the library....and that just won't work. The interim represents a unique look at where we are at without the immediate pain of direct cancer contact. We are trying to move on and we are succeeding for now. I say "for now" because "for now" is all that really matters to me, especially on a day that has always been a fun one for most of not all of 38 years (I would have to admit I do not recall the joyous times of birthdays 0-5 very much but apparently they were thrilling).
Lately I've been wishing to find those quiet moments where things stand still. The special place where everything makes sense for a few moments. It doesn't have to be me by myself, but it has to present itself as something of a deep breath, perhaps a little sigh of relief, but more of a lung filled swallow of air that exhales completely without worry. I think about being up in the Sierras on a backpacking trip when we first came upon the Cotton Wood Lakes area, I have vivid memories of sitting next to Polly on our honeymoon on the shores of Kauai in white lawn chairs and not moving for almost two full days or our trek across country to Carolina where en route we descended out of Yellowstone park and saw EXACTLY why they call Wyoming Big Sky country. Sometimes I'm on my grandfather's boat sitting on the bow as we embark beyond the jedi ton escape to Catalina....the salt water filled air an incredible taste of what home will always be for me...and the incredible feeling of a Saturday dive being under the ocean's surface looking at life in complete silence. The day I came home from high school in March of my senior year, no one else home yet, and on the corner of dining room table was an envelope with my Bruin acceptance letter which I relished in complete silence before picking up the phone to call my dad. Or the overnight in Banner Elk in the Appalachian Mountains (yes, that's a town...please know your geography with this blog) when Polly and I were engaged, enjoyed our time to the fullest and then had to sit next to a man at brunch the next day who was dressed in yellow head to toe to cheer on his beloved Tenneesee Chatanooga football team that day (yellow socks and shoes, brutha?!) but found out what the weekend meant for us and wished us well. And of course the nights were Polly and I sat feeding the twins at 1:30am half awake, trying to laugh at Jimmy Fallon's jokes on Late-Late-Late night when the only worries were burping, diaper changes, and trying to function on 4 hours of sleep. These times were a lot of beginnings for the most part. I'd like to wish for more of those.
I am reading a book recommended to me by my Aunt (Thankyou!) written by John Green called "The Fault in Our Stars". I have not finished it yet, so please do not tell me how it ends. Actually I think I already know the ending will not be pleasant but the perspective of a terminally ill 17 year old girl is helping push this spring time lull to a better place for me....even if it just means I have a better Tuesday following this birthday monday when its back to the treadmill. She speaks in real terms and calls it how it is when faced with slowly succombing to cancer. The author shares that the only thing worse than having cancer is being a parent with sick child. Interesting, I don't know if I fully believe that but it was quite something to see someone else say it. Oh how I've wished this was my battle and not Ellie's. Anyways, the main character, Miss Hazel Grace, embarks on a trip through a Make-A-Wish esque organization to seek answers on what happened to several characters in her favorite book. Hand in hand she goes with a fellow cancer warrior who she undoubtedly falls in love with. It is a heroic tragedy from the start and her line of "The World just isn't a wish granting factory" rings very true for me today. Maybe getting what we really want is not the goal. Recognition of moments that make time stand still regardless of the overlying factors could be the heart of the wish. A wish that can never truly be granted but will at least let you keep wishing....and hoping. Cancer has to be one of the only things that makes me hate saying that and love saying that at the same time. Hazel says to a non-cancer friend of hers at one point who keeps commenting on how strong she is, "I'll give you all my strength, if I can have your permanent remission". Brutally honest truth when looking at how those two worlds intersect sometimes and though astonished she would lay that on her friend in broad daylight....cannot blame her in the least.
I had dinner with just Ellie a couple weeks ago. Timmy had a follow up appointment with his eye surgeon (he is doing awesome, by the way, on that front....better than we could have ever hoped for) in the city which Polly took him to. I picked up Ellie from school and decided we needed a Daddy-daughter dinner at a nearby restaurant. So, we got a two person booth facing eachother and she got right to coloring the placemat, her strokes now completely within the lines carefully laid out so that each color can be seen in its proper segment on the page. Her attention to detail was not so mesmerizing that she would look up and pose a few questions my way. "Daddy, what will you have for dinner?" I had thought about telling her that I wanted seared Ahi with garlic mashed potatoes and seasoned greens that oozed with a sauce underneath the fish....but I settled for "I'm gonna have Pasta". "ME TOO!" she said with as much energy as she has when she wakes up gleefully at 6am and starts prodding timmy to wake up or else she threatens to start singing. And we continued our banter back and forth about how her day at school was, with her head tossing side to side and her now near neck length pig tails never ceasing movement. She was looking forward to getting to go swimming again now that her leg was almost healed and she wasn't sure if Timmy could go with her because his eyes were still red, but she would ask Mommy. "Daddy, I want Milk" I like when she asks for things that I can give to her. From start to finish, I think we were in the restaurant for all of about 24 and half minutes. But I can tell you time stood still.
Even if my ultimate wish for her (or for Polly, Timmy, and I) has not been granted yet, I am committed to doing the dance party/treadmill to get to Tuesday so that I can see again if it might be. If its not, I'll get back to seeking the moments in the interim. The Hazel Graces have a deadline....right now (and I mean RIGHT NOW)....we, us, Ellie do not. I have to remember that. So, #38 is another beginning for the four of us, right?! One with limitless potential. I wish with everything I have and all that T&E will become for that to be true.
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