"You're Not The Only One"

Now this is interesting.

"Peach" has cooked up a groovy blog-writing / book-publishing / fund-raising hybrid thing that's kind of fun. Check it out.

Has anything happened to you?

Well, yeah, of course it has. So write about it already, and send it to Peach. The deadline is February 29th.

If you're lucky, it will become part of a book, the proceeds of which will go to support War Child, an organization that...

"...works with children affected by war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Our work with former child soldiers, children in prison and children living and working on the streets gives them support, protection and opportunities. To make sure we provide them with what they need we involve them directly in all our decision making."

Your submission does not need to relate to any of the themes that spin off of this kind of work. Mine, rather predictably, was a blog post I made (elsewhere) last spring about Fergus' leukemia and the fear of relapse:

Wet Shoes, Dropping Shoes

We had a wet snowfall yesterday, and as I left the gym. picking my way to the car through the slush, I started thinking about the end of treatment, and how Lauren and I will live with the possibility of relapse.

In short (because it was a short walk to the car), it comes down to what may be a minor distinction:

Lauren will spend the time waiting expectantly for the Other Shoe to drop. I think there is some comfort for her, or self- protection anyway, in holding onto a sense of inevitability about bad events, as if they are the flip side to the many good events in her life. I won't say this is some sense of a higher power at work in her life; it could simply be a sense about the sheer chance of bell curves. But it's a powerful, semi-inevitable power at work.

I, on the other hand, will fear relapse pretty much all the time, but if it happens I don't think I will feel any larger forces at work, not even chance. The earth will just fall out from under me--because of the specific, terrifying actuality of relapse. And then we'll move on and do whatever needs to be done.

These comparisons (accurate or inaccurate as they may be) washed through my mind as I got out my keys and unlocked the car. I'm not sure where they came from; I guess they are always there, and they simply bubble up when there aren't a lot of distractions around.

Then it hit me, as it sometimes does, like something half-forgotten: You have a child with cancer. It's an astounding, surreal thing to feel all over again. Your son has leukemia.

Re-absorbing or re-feeling that truth quickly discombobulated everything I had been thinking.

The truth is, I don't know how I'll feel when he goes off treatment, as we sit around waiting for something to (not) happen. Cancer is so big, so hard to get your head around, that it's hard not to think of larger forces at work. Or anyway, of forces that work mysteriously, with little predictability. I don't know if the forces are part of the fabric of the universe or just part of the fabric of my son's bone marrow. But the shoe will dangle. And it will be out of our hands.

Posted by robbo on April 13, 2007 2:05 PM

But this is just what I had lying around. SURELY YOU CAN DO BETTER. So go ahead.

Thank you so much to Angus for pointing this project out.