Benji felt great today. He took his new round of morning supplements (a mushroom blend, milk thistle and turmeric) without complaint. He was excited for school and excited for baseball.
Interestingly, and through wildly different circumstances, I scheduled breakfast, lunch, and dinner with friends today. It’s rare that such an outing happens once in a day, let alone three times. The first meeting was with mothers of children with whom Banyan attends middle school. I was so thankful to be in their reassuring presence. The second meeting was long overdue, with a friend I adore and see far too infrequently, a mutual confidant. The third meeting was after the sun went down, to celebrate the birth of my bridge walking partner, my gatekeeper, my dear friend.
I walked away from each of these meetings feeling so incredibly grateful. Grateful for the excellent friendships I have cultivated, grateful for our children’s friendships, but mostly, grateful for my marriage. I feel so fortunate to be supported so fully; to be able to balance working, parenting, caregiving, housekeeping, and personal growth. I enjoyed an evening with friends and returned home to find that the medicine has been given and the children are asleep, peacefully. I don’t take it lightly.
I volunteered to manage the scorecard up in the booth at Benji’s baseball game this evening. It was intense and fast paced, and I was grateful that Banyan wanted to help me. He manned the scoreboard and I marked the card with balls, strikes, bases hit and outs achieved, trying to keep pace. Benji made some great fielding plays, but he was still hesitant in the batter’s box. He was absolutely slugging them at the batting cages yesterday. Today, he backed away from the plate. I wish I knew how to help him take that brave step. I know he can overcome this. He knows it too.
League rules mandate one parent volunteer from each team, and there was a father from the opposing team marking the scorecards with us. There were many opportunities for me to tell him that Benji is on treatment for leukemia, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel like wrapping all of the last fifteen months into a single word and handing it over to this new person. I just didn’t think that the unwrapping would be done with the right amount of reverence. It felt like a gift, to be able to make that choice; a gift I held close and protected fiercely.