Thursday Afternoons in March

A few days ago I was driving home from work on one of those afternoons when everything feels right. The sun was out. The windows were down. The air was warm enough to make you forget about the morning cold. It was a few days before Spring Break when life as a teacher gets a little easier. As I was driving down my street, I noticed my mom was outside in her front yard, and I stopped to talk to her. We sat on her front steps, also my front steps in a lot of ways. We talked about nothing in particular. The flowers she was planting. My plans for Spring Break. The nine holes of golf she had played that morning. I stayed for maybe thirty minutes before continuing down the street to my house.

As I got in my car to leave my mom, I realized that those are the moments that make cancer hard to bear. Cancer is not so obvious a problem at Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's. There is too much already present on those days. Too many gifts. Too many people. Too many chores. Too many things to keep your mind from worrying. It is sunny afternoons in Spring when the work day is done and my mom feels good enough to work in her yard when cancer creeps up on you. It is conversations on front steps where cancer is nowhere to be found in my mom's words or laughter when cancer grabs me once again. It is a random Thursday not worth noting for any other reason than wanting to remember my mom just like that. Happy. Healthy. Funny. Present. It is those moments that remind me that cancer is still a part of our lives. We are not fighting cancer like we were a year or two years ago. We are not going to doctor appointments every week or holding our breath for test results. She is not in enough pain to mention. She is not worried enough to steal her usual ways. But cancer is not gone and in all honesty it probably never will be for the rest of my mom's life. All of our front step conversations will unfold against the backdrop of illness. Cancer will permanently be glaring over our shoulders. Stealing a bit of our afternoons. Darkening the sunlight that used to not be worth so much. Tugging at our memories. Reminding us to hold on to these conversations and these moments when things are better than they used to be, than they could be. These moments are easy. Too easy. Afternoons when things are they way they are supposed to be worry me now. Somewhere on those steps there is a ticking that can't be silenced. There is a relentless reminder that no one knows what is around the corner.

It is afternoons like this one that cancer is a problem; however, without cancer these afternoons would not count nearly as much. The ticking would be gone. The skies would just be bright. The flowers would just be blooming. The words would just be words between two people. Cancer takes away, but it also gives back. It makes you (me) stay a few minutes longer and laugh a little quicker and make note of Thursday afternoons in March when the world is right and the people you love so much are planting flowers in the front yard.