Anniversaries

The month of September always gets me. Not only is it Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, with the barrage of images and stories, Facebook updates and fundraising pleas. I wish I’d been more engaged this month, I certainly meant to post regular updates, but that never seems to happen anymore. (Some other parents did it for me though and they did it well and with anger and passion and jaw-dropping statistics: see here and here and here.)

Then there’s the fact that September 2007 was probably the worst and darkest month for us in all of our years of treatment, the calendar dates file past with bold reminders of things we’d really rather forget. This was date when we realized his tumor was growing, big and fast and with terrifying mystery; this was the date they removed his right kidney, along with that hard to fathom six-and-a-half pound tumor; these were the six days when we waited and waited and waited, pacing the hospital room, searching for signs, for the results that would define the rest of our lives; these were the ten days we waited and waited and waited for Austin to be allowed to eat, hiding ice chips from his weakening one-year-old grasp. It’s a virtual landmine of anniversaries.

And then there is today: the sixth anniversary of my second baby boy’s first birthday.

Because today Austin is seven. Against all odds. Seven.

And, speaking of against all odds, he’s holding a 75-pound albino python in my dining room, but more on that later.