Cutting the burnt part off

The real moment when you realize you are grown up is when you wake up to put the turkey in the oven.  Pathetic child that just the year before you woke up to the smell of turkey baking.  This happened to me the first Thanksgiving that I was married to my ex-husband.  And his mother fixed a roast for the holiday...that should have been the first sign that he would become my ex. (I love me some turkey)

My memories of Thanksgiving are renewed every time I smell a turkey baking.  My mom got up at 5:00 a.m. to put the homemade stuffing into that bad boy and get his 20-26 lb. stuffed into the oven. The same oven that would have spent all day Wednesday pumping out 10-12 pies. (My mom was an over-achiever on holidays with food...okay, any day but the holidays were her Olympics). Our main complaint was in her stuffing she put those nasty pieces of chopped up liver and other bizarre inards that were made to be tossed.

And then, the family would come and various friends packing into the house.  Some made it every year, others fell away.  Our teenage boyfriends and girlfriends, later husbands and wives and kids like piss ants on sugar cookies.  My parent's house was big until we got older and it started to shrink with all of the packing in to eat and celebrate. 

The electric knife slicing thru the turkey, microwave beeps and the reminder to put the rolls in the oven.  It did not matter who was in charge those rolls got either too brown or burnt every year.  My mom and I standing over the cookie sheet, cutting off the burnt part.  I do not think I had an entire roll until we started buying the pre-baked ones.

And the feeding frenzy..."Who made this?" and "what is that?", "Is there any more cool whip?", "Can you get me a can of pop?" ....just the sound of it all.  Voices, laughter.
Afterwards we would play games and my mom and dad didn't want to play but would shout out the answers and we would yell, "Do you want to play or what?"  Shouts and cheating and more laughter, laughter.  And looking around and knowing, this is love.  It may be loud and dysfunctional at times and drunk and sober and crying and laughing and yelling and talking but THIS IS LOVE.

THIS IS LOVE.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

A decade

10 years ago today I went to the doctor with my oldest daughter Aubrey.   I thought they were going to talk about some surgery she would need, maybe she had ovarian cysts. She was 19 and I figured they wanted a parent to help her understand...
10 years ago today I found out my baby had stage 4 Ovarian cancer.
10 years ago today things changed forever.

When you go through this it is like some true definition of surreal...this is really what it is like.  Not real but you still are going through it, trying to breath through it, trying to make it through it. It being cancer.
So, on November 7th my world was rocked and on November 8th they took a tumor out of my girl the size of a magazine and 2 lymphe nodes the size of apples.  We were in the hospital for one week.
We came home and started the rounds to doctors.  Chemo started and stopped because of kidney issues and then a shunt and then back to chemo.
We hit every major holiday. Thanksgiving she could still eat. By Christmas we were shaving her head and hearing her puke.  Is there anything as sad as being 19 and getting your head shaved?  Or being too damn tired to do anything?
Needles and drugs. Blood transfusions and bottles of drugs. These were the longest months of my life. New Year's and finally February 14th we were done!
I think about these days often.  My heart breaks for every family that has to hear those words. It is cancer.
In the 10 years since I have changed.  Some times not for the better, there is a sadness that just sits in my soul... my child had cancer.  We came out on the other side but still, my baby had cancer.

Tomorrow though, we will celebrate that she has been cancer free for 10 years!  When I tell her I want to go out  and where does she want to go she tells me KFC.  This is the girl she is.  I laugh and say, somewhere better than that.  We will feast at Red Lobster and I will remember the months she couldn't eat anything without puking.  I will look at her hair with the new blue streak and remember the weeks with no hair. I will count my blessing that she is so wonderful she thought to include her Grandpa in our celebration. 
I will try to remember that every day is a gift, a powerful gift that we take for granted every day. A gift that we assume we will always have. A gift that I should be thanking God for every second of every day...
So, thank you God for every single day the past 10 years. 
And thank you for that Aubrey kid, we love her to pieces!