Through The Waters

All is calm, all is bright...       I have a precious few minutes before the day begins, before doors creak open and our daughter makes her way into our room saying "it's day, Mommy", despite the darkness of our Canadian winter, before the routines of breakfast and getting dressed and the busyness of life sets in.  It's good to sit, here in the dark, in front of the tree and think.  Words of carols have been tossing through my brain a lot the last weeks.  As the Christmas season slowly moves forward, I've got a lot of thoughts about many things.  It's been a while since the last update and that for good reason - somehow, to afford the luxury of sitting down and letting your ideas and such spill out of you onto the virtual page, is a difficult thing to manage.  It seems strange, being that I'm not working, maybe, but with a two and a half month old baby (gaack, where does the time go?  How is she so old already?), a very busy active t...

I know it's been a little bit since there's been an update... and I think I'll chalk that up to the busy Christmas season and life with two little ones and chemo and all those things that make up our lives lately.  As I type today, it's definitely a bit of a challenge owing to the fact that I am on two different chemo drugs that have conflicting side effects.  One drug makes my hands and virtually all other parts of me very sensitive to cold - so that if I touch a cold door handle or a key or step on a cold floor, there are feelings like shocks that run through my hands or feet.  On our way to Martha's Christmas program the other night, I had to park blocks away (should've clued in that there would be a lot of people there) and carry Ava with me and I have never been so glad to see my dear friend Laura who helped me trek up to the church.  By the time I made it inside, due to panic of being late and the cold cold air, my throat was having spasms that made it har...

   Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright... the baby is swinging away, Martha is tucked into her bed after another tumultuous suppertime and I'm here... with quiet music on, the Christmas tree tucked into the corner keeping me company and lending a comforting, still, aromatic and seasonal presence to the room.  It's the Christmas season, it's descending upon us with great speed - the stores are filled with decorations and holiday music and there are lights popping up everywhere and we tend to get caught up with the busyness of the season - so many articles are written about trying to tame the crazy Christmas season and to remember the reason for the season.       And though our house is slowly beginning to look a lot like Christmas, it's a different flavour this year.  It's a bit more of a sobering flavour, a bit of a dark reality that lurks just beyond the glow of the lights.  The knowledge of what we are facing, what we are ba...

    It's been a little while... I know... it's hard to find time to sit down and type out your thoughts when those thoughts are jumbled up due to chemo and a lack of sleep due to a certain small someone.  So if I am a bit rambly, please accept my humble excuses (i know, i know, no excuses). And maybe, sometimes, there just isn't anything to say or think or write.  But tonight I'm brought to thinking about milestones...those moments in life that we celebrate, remember, sometime sorrow over, maybe regret but nonetheless they are a part of the fabric and map of our life's journey.  And tonight, my milestone that I remember is the birth of our miracle baby, Ava Grace.  It's hard to imagine or believe that six weeks ago tonight, we were finally settled in our hospital room and learning all about our new little girl after having gone through a marathon 46 hours of labour and delivery events.  I sometimes ponder writing a book about our experience...

    Waiting... is that something you ever think about?  Worry about?  Hate doing?   When I thought about things today, after a variety of different encounters, as I thought about the last six months (for that's how long we've been at this cancer battle), I thought a lot about waiting.  We wait at stoplights, we wait for other people, we wait for things to happen that might never happen.  I wait too... Timothy has told me that it is my new job - to wait.  I told him promptly that I stunk at my new job - because waiting means you need patience, calm and peace.. but above all, patience.  And nothing is really more infuriating than waiting... for appointments, for doctors, for phone call backs, for CT results, for a baby to make her appearance, for chemo drugs to finish dripping in... and all that waiting involves different parts of your brain.  The whole - you have to be patient - factor - that's SO hard.... let's be honest here... it'...

         It's Tuesday evening in the Meadows and I'm sitting here in the darkened living room, listening to some Leonard Cohen music, whilst the washing machine churns it's heart out downstairs washing up baby laundry and whilst Ava slumbers peacefully in her swing while down the hall her big sister (boy, she looks so big lately!) is finally asleep after holding her own private concert for the last half hour - that girl loves to sing and we encourage that wholeheartedly!  And it's peaceful and quiet and mellow and just a good ending to a better day.  On a positive note, I was finally able to muster the energy and vim to take a stroll with Ava and my mother-in-law in our neighbourhood to finally enjoy some of the crisp fall breezes and the beautiful fall colours.         Fall is usually one of my favourite seasons but this year somehow, the melancholy and sadness of things dying off is contributing a bit to my mood being ...

     It's a quiet morning here in the Meadows... the crows are cawing outside, the curtains are still drawn, the clouds are hanging around not letting any sunshine in this morning and Ava's happily asleep in her bassinet, Timothy's at work and Martha's at daycare and here I sit in the living room.  Contemplating the last few days and weeks, contemplating where life is at right now, trying to figure out the meaning of it all at present.  It's been a challenging few weeks - I know I haven't written much and maybe that's because everything seems a little jumbled up in my head.  Ever since we received our CT results and plunged back into the world of chemo and cancer care and all that goes with it, it's been difficult to reconcile things in my head.  We've struggled with the dichotomy of switching from a joyful welcoming of our second daughter into our lives to dealing with the realities of starting chemo again.  Our dear Ava is nearly three weeks old...