An Ordinary Wish

My, what a difference four years can make. Last night was the fabulous Fairfax Cabaret, an every other year talent show that takes place on the high school stage. There’s a full stage crew, spotlights, headset microphones and all the accoutrements of a professional production. And it is so much fun, with everything from piano and violin solos to groups of girls singing and swaying to Beyonce. It is, at its essence, classic Cleveland Heights, capturing all that we love about our school and our district.

Because it’s only every other year (just too much dang work for the PTA to do each year), we’ve only been to two prior to this one. And the first, held in January 2010, was quite a different experience for us. Braedan was in kindergarten, Austin was in treatment, and I was understandably absent from all volunteer activities at school. On this rare occasion, we left a severely immuno-compromised Austin home with a sitter so Mark and I could take Braedan to the big event. It was the end of a horrible “death by a thousand paper cuts” kind of week, in which Austin’s mediport had failed during our week of in-patient chemo and he’d had a surprise mediport-repair surgery (“Surprise!”) scheduled mere minutes after he consumed two grapes for breakfast (two grapes!), rendering him unable to be anesthesized for a full and excruciating eight hours. That particular surgery, which was supposed to be “quick” and after which we expected to go home, was instead long and unsuccessful and left Little A with a PICC line instead of a mediport and left the two of us in the hospital for yet another night. We were on edge, exhausted and beat down, by the time we arrived at the high school for the next night’s festivities. I don’t remember much about that particular show, aside from multiple tear-filled conversations with people who innocently asked me how Austin was doing.

And if I had made a wish that night, I imagine it would have been a small, ordinary wish: that he live, that we someday get to sit int he audience together to watch other kids show off their talents. I would never have allowed myself to wish that four short (and very, very long) years later, Austin would be up on stage dancing, cartwheeling and somersaulting with the Fairfax Tumblers to What Does the Fox Say?

But that is exactly what he did last night.