I am thinking a lot tonight about energy, and the way it circles around all of us, all the time. It is palpable and transferable. We give it and we receive it. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but we can absolutely choose what we do with it.
I worked almost all day today while the boys were at school. I was productive and creative, and I was benefiting my family. The work felt good. As I worked, messages would pop up on my screen; one was from a friend who has just learned that her double masectomy did not remove all of the cancerous cells from her body. She will have a port placed, and chemo will begin soon. I wanted to tell her so many things, but I was very cognizant of the possibility of overwhelming her. I will send her an email and she can digest it when she is ready. Again, I find parallels between new cancer diagnosis and new motherhood; the overwhelm, the fierce protectiveness, the need to filter information from many different sources. I received another message from a mother whose son has a much more rare form of cancer than Benjamin has. She is supporting her son with natural therapies I’ve never even heard of. I was blown away. I have a whole list of new things to research.
Benjamin was in such good spirits after school. He requested a “kalicious” for snack: a smoothie made with 1.5 frozen bananas, the juice of 1 granny smith apple, the juice of 1 lemon, 3 kale leaves, and a handful of spinach thrown into a blender. It’s one of our favorites. We picked Banyan up from school and I was thrilled to see that his positive academic trend is continuing. The boy has really turned a corner. He has even trimmed his fingernails and washed his own gym clothes without being asked this week. Could it be that some profound nugget of wisdom I’ve imparted has truly sunk in? Or, the more likely explanation, that he really wants his iPhone back? Regardless, it’s a sight for sore eyes. Our home has regained a certain joyful spirit that it was lacking just a week ago. Welcome back.
I put dinner on the table and handed the baton to Michael tonight so I could attend a rainbow star making gathering at our local Expressive Arts Academy. I was helping Banyan with his homework when it was time for me to leave. He was doing an assignment online where he had to correct sentences that contained errors in grammar and punctuation. I walked out the door as he was clicking onto his very last sentence. “MOM!” he called to me. I walked back into my office. There, on the computer screen, were Maya Angelou’s words: be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud. He looked at me incredulously. I couldn’t believe it either. We smiled at each other, goosebumps rising.
The Expressive Arts Academy gathering was just lovely. The space was gorgeous, with handmade acts of beauty and kindness everywhere. We sat in a circle before creating our stars, seated around a quilted piece woven with more Maya Angelou wisdom: “We have such great times, sharing, laughing, growing, teaching, learning, loving.” I felt honored to have been invited to share our story, and honored to have been gifted with ten stars to send out into the world at the end of the evening. One woman who attended is friends with a little girl who has a brain tumor. She seemed so happy, so fulfilled to be able to create a little symbol of hope for her. The energy sealed within each star when it is laminated is powerful and real. Every fold and every point is created with love. I received photographs today of a little girl in Tennessee who received her star. She looked so happy to be hanging it on her window, and I was beside myself to see it in her home.
As I was teaching the Expressive Arts group how to fold the individual points, I likened the first two steps to a the beginning steps of a paper airplane. I shared something with them that I hadn’t vocalized before; every single time I make a rainbow star, I think of Hudson. Because the last time he and Benjamin played together in the Infusion Center, I made paper airplanes for them to fly through the halls, over and over and over again. Every star I make, now and forever, will have Hudson’s sparkly energy infused into it. I need to tell his mama that.
Energy can neither be created or destroyed. But it can be transferred. It can be sent out into the world. It can be negative or it can be positive. We get to decide. What a gift!