These are the days of miracles and wonder

. . . and when you make a long distance call the children complain that there's no video.

We've been driving around listening to Handel's Messiah lately.  Not just the Hallelujah chorus, but the other bits, too.  Dane always complains when it's played at Christmas . . . and I tell him he's a pedantic brat and play it anyway.  But when I listen to it in April -- even in a cold dry April like this one -- I realize he's right.  It's really springtime music, full of hesitancy, and hope, and glad relief. 

Glad relief, or maybe just gratitude, was the theme of our early spring.  After a few years of constant health struggles and a very difficult move, we had a good winter.  A long, cold, cooped up, mildly crazy-making winter to be sure.  But everyone was fairly healthy, busy, and productive.  We all got some much needed rest.  We had family dinners, and Dane and I both enjoyed cooking.  We read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies with the kiddos.  We introduced the boys to James Harriot, which was a pleasure for everyone -- even after the 15th reading of "The Christmas Day Kitten!  The Christmas Day Kitten!  Not Moses, Mom!  The Christmas Day Kitten!"  The boys played vet and a million other games with their "menagerie" of stuffed squirrels and rabbits and cats.  Tristan -- to my foolish surprise -- also became extremely interested in space.  So we started working our way through a fair amount of Nova specials, and the beginning of the new Cosmos series, and some of the really fine space-race documentaries like In the Shadow of the Moon.  We also watched Disney's Robin Hood roughly 30 times, made gluey art, and nearly overflowed the bath tub twice. And when the snow finally melted we were glad.  Simple, happy, run-around-in-the-yard-like-crazy-people glad.

When Sherry, Dane's mom, suddenly got sick in March, we didn't worry too much.  She is the kind of person who takes care of everyone else.  She had re-arranged her house last summer so that we could crowd in and stay with her until we found a new house of our own.  She and Dane's dad had done the lion's share of the work of getting our belongings out of our old house, when we were too sick to lift, carry, and haul.  This winter, she was working full time, covering extra duties for a co-worker on leave, and helping us with the boys a couple of nights per week.  So when she took an odd day off with a headache or an upset stomach, we thought, "No wonder!  She's exhausted." Even when her symptoms spiraled out of control, into something more like a stroke, that thinking persisted.  We weren't prepared -- who is?? -- when she was abruptly diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

All of us -- Dane, his parents, and I -- have been floundering under this strange reality.   A thing that's broken and can't be fixed.  A disease that can be fought, but not beaten.  It's outside my adult experience.  This is the 21st century!  We've eradicated major childhood diseases!  We send robots to space!  I had a video conference with a colleague in Latvia this week! Dammit, they can do something!!!  With tubes!! And blinky lights!!!  This is not real. 

I tell my incubator babies, "Grammy is very sick.  She had to go to the hospital, like you did when you were little. Remember? They fixed you."  The boys feel better, and I feel like a liar.  Our babies came home whole and well, but it turns out that hospitals aren't reliable miracle factories. 

It's been six weeks since the "stroke" that caused Sherry to stop working, four weeks since the phone rang at seven in the morning and Dane helped rush his mom to the hospital for an emergency MRI, two weeks since we learned the words glioblastoma multiforme.  Parts of our strange new world are becoming normal.  I've mostly stopped having nightmares and totally sleepless nights.  Dane, too, seems to have settled into something like . . . acceptance?  We talk and we plan and we worry, worry, worry, especially about Dane's dad.  But we go on with work and everything else.  Dane kisses me on the cheek and says, "Oh, I'm taking Mom to chemo tomorrow."  He tells me what a good day he and Sherry had talking and making brain tumor jokes.  Her Arnold Schwarzenegger impression is improving.

So now we go lightly.  Preparing for the worst, but holding out a sliver of hope for a good dice roll.  Reading about the improvements in chemotherapy and radiation.  Hoping to make the best of this year for everyone, and listening to springtime music.