True Dedication

Had I known my path, I would have dedicated this blog right from the beginning. Instead I do it seven years after I started it. Sitting around on a Saturday night, I feel so on the other side of my transplant; on the other side of leukemia. But deep inside, I know I will never really be casual about this. I spend hours upon hours just feeling grateful. And lucky. Because lucky is all I really am. And lucky is all my family is. My heart aches for everyone ever taken down by leukemia and it aches for all those people who loved them.  My life has swung around in so many radical directions: from  thinking it was no big deal, to thinking I was doomed, to then to being back in the fight, losing it all and then being swept back up into the game again and finally winning. It was a dizzying, sickening, madness. And now I’m just a regular gal again. But what I’ve learned is that none of us is regular. We all have our shit. And we all have our miracles.   Shit usually comes in a really large and hideous looking package, while miracles come in all sorts of packages, (some the tiniest you can ever imagine).

I like the word miracle. It comes from the Latin, to wonder. And I’ve learned that for me, a meaningful life is a life of wonder.  I am an unabashed lover of art of every single type, babies, animals, nature, color - like the different blues of my boys’ eyes. I do things like choose in my mind the type of rocks that would most represent the strength of my husband. I’m including a picture. I brought these home from Bergen in Norway. They're silvery and soft and have taken a beating from the sea. But they're just as solid as ever.

I do things like see the poetry that follows around every woman I’ve ever known and loved.  In Spanish, mira means to look.  It’s so simple. Just look- miracles are constant. From your heart beating without your asking it to, to a generous young mother who said yes to donating stem-cells to someone she'd likely never know.

This blog is dedicated to my rock and husband Andy. To my two sons who breathe beautiful life into me every second of my existence. To the women who propped me up when I’d completely fallen down, and to my stem-cell donor, Monique, whose awesome Latina, Native American DNA miraculously matched this Jewish girl.  For you, I will follow what you told me, and live a good life.  The meaning of thanks is to think with gratitude. I understand this more deeply now than I ever thought I could.