No looking back

"Someday" became "now" for me today.

For years, I have wanted to make some kitchen upgrades. The counters are a tired, plain white. The cooking appliances are barely adequate -- an electric cooktop that struggles to get hot enough for dishes like stirfry, a narrow wall oven with one rack and a mediocre microwave.

College tuition for two children was the major priority that pushed my kitchen dream to the background. Then along came Cancer 2.0, giving me days when my view of the future was so short I wondered about investing in new underwear, let alone a new kitchen.

Now I am ready for a kitchen that I plan to enjoy for a long time. I spent time this week with my interior-designer sister-in-law making decisions on fun things like a new Silgranite sink and a faucet with a pull-out spray nozzle and narrowing the choices on granite counter tops. This afternoon I ordered a dual-fuel slide-in range and a combination wall oven with microwave and convection cooking. It was with great faith in a healthy future that I handed my credit card to the appliance salesman.

Last week I had my three-month follow-up CT scans, but I'm not anxious about the results I'll get on Wednesday. It feels good and right to be moving ahead to realize a long-held dream and not planning my future in small increments between doctor's visits.

Baby apps

I was feeding my grandson his rice cereal and squash yesterday when there was a lull in the action. My cell phone was sitting nearby, so I reached over to check a new e-mail indicated by the flashing red light. I clicked off e-mail and back to the screen saver. Then I saw Dodge eying my phone intently and smiling one of his biggest smiles of the day.

How cute, I thought. He has seen the photo of himself that I took the day he was born. It appears on my screen when I am not using the phone for other purposes. I figured he would also enjoy seeing himself on the digital picture frame his parents gave us for Christmas, so I positioned the frame where he could watch it while I finished feeding him. He did occasionally watch the photos scrolling across the digital frame the rest of the evening, but he never got as excited about them as he had when he spied me checking my phone.

When my daughter picked up the baby last night, I mentioned to her how tickled he had gotten when he saw his picture on my phone. Mandy started laughing, and then, demonstrating with her own Blackberry, she showed me what was really going through her seven-month-old's mind.

She has downloaded a free, baby-proof application that lets Dodge press keys without accidentally placing phone calls or otherwise using her phone in a way she might regret. His reward for each key is a brightly colored block that floats across the screen while a child's voice clearly announces the letter on the key.

Having the same phone as Mandy, I also now have the same "Baby Go!" app. Dodge is coming over again tonight, and my phone is on the charger.

One year later

A year ago, I was in a bad way.

I was lying in a hospital bed with a tube through my nose pulling dark green bile from my stomach and two drains in my right side pulling watery blood from my abdomen. A large, malignant tumor had been surgically removed the day before, Feb. 12, 2009, and for that I was beyond grateful.

As Valentine's Day came, my hospital room was brightened with beautiful flowers, bright red bows and greeting cards, but there were no chocolates, red wine or romantic dinners. It would be nearly a week before I would be allowed to eat anything, and several weeks before I really enjoyed eating again. Now Tom and I are looking forward to dinner at a favorite restaurant tomorrow night.

I didn't really mind not celebrating Valentine's Day last year. I was just glad to be celebrating life; thrilled to be rid of the mass that had been haunting most waking thoughts for the previous five months. I was ready to begin my recovery and to prepare for the birth of my first grandchild.

This year, Valentine's Day has deep new meaning. The first card has already arrived, and I have never received one more special. The cherub gracing this card is my grandson. In adorable photos taken my daughter, Dodge plays with a plastic, heart-shaped, red cookie cutter and a large, pink-swirled sucker in the shape of a heart.

As challenging as my circumstances may have seemed a year ago, they could not be much brighter now. I am blessed with good health and surrounded by great love.

Finishing

I hate leaving a project undone. Big or small, major or mundane, I just don't like dragging around the weight of too many things on my to-do list. So it was with reluctance that I packed a half-done, brown brocade ballgown into a plastic storage container in my basement in the fall of 2008.

I had started making the dress with great anticipation that summer, envisioning how pretty I would feel as I accompanied my husband to dances at some of his Civil War reenactment events. Midway through the project, I was working on the tight-fitting bodice when I discovered the lump that turned out to be a fast-growing cancer in my abdomen.

Now, on the other side of chemotherapy, surgery and a return to good health, I pulled the container out, unpacked my sewing machine and returned to my project. As I pinned, stitched and pressed the fabric to completion, I offered up prayers of thanksgiving and marveled at the journey this dress will always symbolize for me.

I did, indeed, feel beautiful as my husband and I joined the Grand March into the Statehouse Atrium last Saturday night for the annual Civil War-era winter ball. It was not just that the dress turned out as pretty as I had envisioned. My euphoria came from being able to finish what I started when my battle with Cancer 2.0 began.

Pennies from heaven

See a penny; pick it up. All that day you'll have good luck.

I am an incorrigible penny-picker-upper. It makes me smile to find money on the ground, even in that smallest denomination, because I view it as a good luck symbol. It's part of my optimist nature, but it's even more than that: I choose to look for signs that life is good and to indulge myself in a smile when I see them.

A year or so ago, I decided I needed another harbinger of good luck and settled on stray bobby pins. I refrain from picking them up, but spying one on the floor of a parking garage or sidewalk or in a locker room shower at the gym gives me the same little lift as a found penny. "It's going to be a good day," I promise myself.

Not finding a penny or not seeing a forgotten bobby pin on the ground doesn't make it a bad day. It's the expectation of good fortune that sets my outlook. I try to start out every day fully intending to experience God's blessings in my life. Lucky charms that cross my path are just my personal reminders that life is good.

Rallying the troops

The farther each day carries me from my surgery last February, the harder it is to remember my ordeal with Cancer 2.0. It is a wonderful blessing, but I really don't want to forget what I went through, and I especially don't want to let down my guard against a recurrence.

That is why I like to take time every day to focus inward to keep my defenses strong and ready. I lay quietly with my hands on my abdomen, directing energy to the area where the tumor sprouted and grew in the fall of 2008. Then I picture myself standing tall as an army general, Patton-like, calling my troops to battle. My mantra goes something like this:

"Attention: Anti-cancer cells! Cancer-fighting crusaders! Pick-axing angels! Your assignment, now and forever, is to seek out and destroy any and all cancer cells in my body.

"Do not let them multiply! Do not let them establish a foothold or gain any ground. Find them wherever they may be, and kill them on contact. Take no prisoners, but destroy them immediately!

"Is that clear? Alright. Now go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!"

Some people believe there really is power and healing in how we direct our thoughts. I don't need scientific proof to know this regular reveille helps maintain my outlook that the cancer won't return.

Resolved

I think we've got this New Year's resolutions thing backwards. By making resolutions at the beginning of the year, it's like we slap our worst flaws on a neon sign and then announce to the world what we are likely to fail at in the coming year.

If you are really committed to doing whatever it is that you "resolve" to do in the new year, wouldn't you have done it already? And if something really is a resolution, doesn't that word mean a problem has already been fixed?

Instead, as one year winds down and we plow toward the next, we continue the bad behaviors and problem habits that we swear we're going to address as we flip the calendar over.

My New Year's Day thoughts played with this notion yesterday. What if we instead celebrate the fresh new calendar by acknowledging our successes of the previous year? Wouldn't that give us extra momentum to deal with our shortcomings throughout the year so that we really will have new victories to hail with the new year?

For me, 2010 begins with a celebration of the challenge from 2008 and 2009 that has been resolved -- my Cancer 2.0. With that behind me, the possibilities of this coming year are endless.