Ganbaru 頑張る! (Ch.1)

05 Mar 2014 7 Comments

by Suelinhess in adventures, Bitching & Moaning, Breast Cancer, Cancer, confidence, Faith, Family, Friendship, Healing, humor, illness, Lent, Love, Medical, Roman Catholic, support, Uncategorized Tags: , ,

(Facebook post from March 2014)

I learned a few new words today. The first words were Infiltrating Duct Adenocarcinoma. In layman’s terms, it means breast cancer. Words that I have dreaded for 30 years since my mom was diagnosed while I was in high school. Statistics told me that the chances of it striking me if my 2nd-degree relatives (grandmother, Aunt Barby) had it, are higher than average. Statistics told me that the chances of it striking me when a first-degree relative (Mom) had it, are even higher. I think my sisters and I held our breaths for years, waiting for one of us to come forward with the awful news because when you have our family history and you add a sister with breast cancer on top of that? It’s like really bad compound interest on a maxed out credit card; you’re probably going to get a call from that creditor for payment … So a few days before Valentine’s Day, I felt the lump, and the first thought was, “Oh no, JoJo and Annie…”

As I was out of town enjoying the best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had, I ignored that lump like it was a whining child in the backseat of the car. I would deal with it when I got back home. As soon as I came home, I saw our family doctor and he sent me straight to Edmonton for a mammogram/ultrasound. My furry man (Markus, my husband) and I kept telling each other, “This could be nothing. Let’s not freak out until someone officially tells us to freak out.” I called my Aunt Barby, since she has been a survivor for 14 years, and she briskly told me, “Now, don’t you go hanging crepe, Sue. Even if the worst is confirmed, so much has advanced in breast cancer treatment in the last 14 years. You can do this. You hang tough and you don’t forget to look out for your furry man. After all, you’re a Hess and you are Hess Tough. He has a slight disadvantage.”

Although there are many critics of some of the wait times in a national healthcare system, it is almost a magical thing to see how quickly people can move in such a system, when things are urgent, here in Alberta. I went in for a mammogram/ultrasound (normally several weeks – months wait), and after a closer look, they asked me to overnight in the city and come in first thing in the morning for a core needle biopsy (normally a few weeks’ waiting time) on the lump and a surprise lymph node that looked “suspicious.” I turned to the radiologist and asked in a shaky voice, “May I see what you see on the ultrasound? Why do you think it’s suspicious looking?” She obliged, showing me the lump, which looked icky and alien, and the lymph node, which turned out to look EXACTLY like the Death Star, I kid you not, complete with the narrow alley that Luke Skywalker had to fly through to blow up the place. I thanked her and held it together until I reached the parking lot and melted into a blubbering mess behind my steering wheel while on speaker phone with Markus. After soothing me and letting me cry for a while, he waited until I calmed down a bit and said one very true thing, “Honey, we have been waiting for this for years, haven’t we? We always knew that this might come up, with your genes. Now that the moment is possibly here, I know we can do this together. Our family can do anything.” So I went back to the hotel room and for the first time in my life, raided the Honour Bar in the room. I binged on Pringles and chocolate and ordered cheese from Room Service. Then I went to bed at 5pm to try to sleep away the time until my morning appointment with the giant needles. Had the craziest dreams from the chips, cheese, and chocolate, and woke up completely unrefreshed.

The needles were super big AND they had a spring-loaded trigger that reached out a mini-claw to snip off core samples of the lump and lymph node. I swear the trigger snapped exactly like my automatic cookie press at home. Each “SNAP” made me jump, and when the radiologist, Dr. Ling, muttered, “darn it” I knew she would have to try again. She apologized and said, “I’m so sorry. I need 4 core samples from each site and these tumours and lymph nodes don’t just sit there nicely. They’re slippery little suckers…like..like…” and I blurted out, “Like bubble tea taro bubbles?” She burst out laughing and said, “YES, EXACTLY! I have never thought of that comparison, but they are JUST like bubble tea…now I don’t know if I ever will drink bubble tea again…” So laughing together and with me doing my Lamaze breathing to stop panicking, I got through that procedure. We taped up the two little tunnels in my breast and armpit, and I drove 4 hours home into the arms of my loving family.

At first, I thought I would wait to tell the kids anything, only sharing if the news was bad. But I made it back home in time to pick them up from school, and Hanna and Simon immediately started to cry, and asked me, “Mama, are you going to die?” I guess not knowing CAN be much worse than knowing. And they jumped to the worst case scenario when they found out I had to stay overnight in the city for more testing. So I decided to tell them absolutely everything. Of course, I had to give them the all the possibilities, which did include possible death, but considering I’ve been having annual mammograms since I was 30, the tumour could only be, at most, a year old. And I caught that sucker all by myself in a self-exam. And I reminded them, I am Hess Tough. We had a big cry and a big hug, and luckily, they went back to being normal children.

The last week has been miserable, waiting and wondering. I used the time to read up on anything I could find about all the possible outcomes, all the types of breast cancer, all the potential treatments. I tried in vain to find cases of a negative biopsy on both a tumour and a lymph node. The very worst part of all was not telling anyone. I didn’t want to worry my dad if it turned out to be benign, I didn’t want to put my sisters into a panic, I didn’t want to burden friends, and even though I am the first to share everything with friends and family on Facebook, I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

Normally I give up Facebook for Lent. Yesterday, I realized with a start, “TOMORROW IS ASH WEDNESDAY.” How was I supposed to go through this ordeal in this Godforsaken place, with most of my friends and family so far away, without my touchstone? With Facebook, I log in and see that you’ve had your morning coffee, that you share my teenager problems, that you laugh at the jokes I love, and that you care about me. I have conversations and I give sympathy or lend a helpful shoulder for anyone to cry on. It could be 3am here in Canada, but my friends in Taiwan, my cousins, friends, and sister in Australia, my old friend in Turkey, and my other loved ones around the world might be awake to have a chat. For the first time, I realize that this would be the wrong Lent to take a Facebook hiatus. This would be the time I would need my friends the most. I bargained with myself, “If the news is good, I’ll give up my FB connections for Lent. If the news is bad, I’m going to ask my friends and family to lend me their shoulders.”

So here I am, on Ash Wednesday, letting you know that you won’t be getting a Lenten break from Suzy Creamcheese this year. One of my closest friends, Laurie, called me from Arizona tonight, marveling, “Sue, what timing you have. Here we are on Ash Wednesday, getting ready to begin a spiritual Lenten Journey, and you have ahead of you the biggest journey of all. Don’t forget that you are not alone, that you can glean strength from all those who love you, and from your faith.” And then I started reading some more and I learned the best new word of all: Ganbaru (頑張る). It’s a Japanese word which some say means “to do one’s best.” But to the Japanese people, it means more than that. It means to do more than survive; it means to “commit oneself fully to a task and to bring that task to an end.” And I hope my furry man, my sweet precious children, my family, and my friends, will Ganbaru by my side. I’m going to do my usual oversharing. I understand that some of you don’t know me as intimately as most so this might gross you out. Don’t worry if you need to bow out and block my feed for a few months. I will see you on the other side. And I am determined to do that – to get to the healthy side of summer. With you to keep me company on this journey, and Ganbaru and Hess Toughness…this shitty little disease hasn’t got a chance.

Flowers and Tea in the Winter Mountains

26 Feb 2013 2 Comments

by Suelinhess in Faith, Friendship, Lent, Roman Catholic, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Image
During the past week, our house has been bustling with the arrival of our oldest daughter, visiting from university, and the departure of our youngest daughter on a French exchange program to Quebec.  Sitting down to write has been a luxury I couldn’t afford, so the words have been filling me to overflowing, inside.  A few days ago, while shopping in Safeway, those words had nowhere else to go, so they started spilling out of my ears.  In the floral section. Luckily, I carry a little notebook for just such occasions, and I caught them before they were lost (something Hashimoto’s has taught me – write it down or lose it forever).
 
Driving to Safeway takes an hour, so I usually take my time, wandering the aisles to make sure we have everything we need before making the long journey home.  At the end of the produce section, I found myself surrounded by flowers.  As I ventured further into the arrangements and noticed all the tulips and lilies,  my heart lifted with the realization that Spring was around the corner.  Living so far north, this is the time of year when it feels as if Winter will go on forever.  So I indulged myself by wandering around the flower section, picking up the heavy glass vases, picturing the long-stemmed blooms I could arrange, and where I would place them in my apartment.  I gently stroked the glossy leaves of the orchid plants, reminiscing about my house in Hawaii, filled with all varieties of those beauties that my husband would bring home to me every few weeks. Large baskets filled with luscious ferns, hung from iron hooks, green tendrils tickling my ears as I brushed by.   All around, the damp smell of healthy plants in rich soil made me feel homesick for something I couldn’t place my finger on…
 
Then I found wide pots filled with assorted bulbs; crocuses, tulips, and hyacinths.   They were slightly over-bloomed, the hyacinth stem drooping with the weight of the heavy blossom clusters. But I knew they would smell heavenly, so I leaned in and nestled my face amongst the petals.  A deep inhale of the heavy perfume…and I found myself in Bedfordshire, England, with my best friend, Connie.  We were taking one of our days off from working in the AAFES Base Exchange store on RAF Chicksands, and enjoying a day visiting garden centers.  Our lives as Air Force wives would have been very boring, if it weren’t for the small miracle of meeting each other.  When I interviewed her for a job in the Shoppette, I remember thinking how nice it would be to have such a fun friend.  She was just a young girl like me- barely 20 or 21, freshly returned from her honeymoon with her high school sweetheart, but smart as a whip, feisty, and quick to smile.  She had long, chestnut brown hair, that fell in wild waves of corkscrew curls, and startling blue eyes that never ever missed a thing.  It’s funny how appearances fooled me into thinking, “high school cheerleader, popular crowd – maybe not interested in being friends with an oboe-playing band geek who liked to read cookbooks for fun and prune roses for kicks.”  Lo and behold, both Connie AND her husband Dan had been band geeks, they loved to cook, and had the same goofy sense of humor I thought I was alone in possessing.  Our husbands worked crazy schedules on base; 3 days of day shifts (7am-3pm), 3 days of mid shifts (3pm-11pm), 3 days of swing shifts (11pm-7am), then 3 days off.  In the beginning, Connie had to wait for base housing, and she and Dan lived in a spider-infested townhouse in a village called Sandy, about 30 minutes from RAF Chicksands.  To escape the dark rooms filled with spiders, we would explore garden centers on our days off from the BX, where we both had transferred to work.  The garden centers were enchanted places where you could wander greenhouses filled to the rafters with plants of all varieties and sizes.  They also had gift shops stocked with gardening books and beautiful pottery to drool over.  But best of all, every garden center had a cozy little area where customers could enjoy high tea.  Some teas were fancy, with scones and clotted cream, and some just offered small sandwiches and strong, sweet, milky black tea from chipped teapots with knitted tea-cozies.  It didn’t matter what the weather was like outside (usually chilly and mostly wet), because inside we were warm in the greenhouse, surrounded by bright flowers and the pleasant muted clinking of our china cups in their saucers.  I  remember that we were always too poor to buy many things (our husbands were brand-new enlisted airmen – we would have had more income on Welfare), but we always had a few pounds to buy a pot of tea and maybe share a sandwich or some sausage rolls.  And wandering the garden centers, paging through the books and looking at, touching, and smelling the flowers were always free.  
 
Connie and Dan eventually secured base housing, and were given a unit just a few hundred yards behind my house.  With our husbands’ shifts keeping them in permanent sleep deprivation, Connie and I had to occupy ourselves with few resources. Living on the economy was very expensive, and simple things like going out to dinner or the movies weren’t luxuries we could all afford very often.  So we learned how to cross-stitch.  And we learned how to cook.  To this day, Connie’s Spaghetti Carbonara is the best sauce I have ever had.  Pancetta, red wine, beef,  sauteed onions, garlic and carrots, all married together for hours, then finished by pureeing and stirring in silky cream.  I could drink the whole pot of sauce if I didn’t have to share it… I tried to convince her that we could open a restaurant and only serve her spaghetti and my beef stroganoff and get RICH!  She would laugh and flap her oven mitts at my foolishness, but to this day, I know people would pay good money for our food – if only they could taste it first.  
 
Once in a while, if our husbands’ off days and swing shifts would coincide,  we would splurge and take the train to London. The 4 of us visited Madame Toussad’s Wax Museum, dallied in Harrod’s, and stood at the gates of Buckingham Palace.  I remember always having a difficult time breathing in those places, not quite believing I was actually travelling in a city that was older than my native country.
 
Every Saturday at 6:45pm or Sunday at 9:45am, Connie would say, “Okay, I’m running to Mass – I’ll be back in about an hour.”  Whether she was at my house or I was at hers, she went.  Her husband and I, both baptized but never raised by families to practice our faith, would wheedle and whine to keep her from going, but she would just smile and say, “I gotta go!  I’ll be right back!”  There was no Bible thumping or preaching – she went because she wanted to go.  My father is Agnostic (in my opinion, a very pretentious way of saying, “I dunno”) and my mother was just paranoid.  She was baptized as a baby (some Missionary must have convinced someone in her family, but never followed through with the rest of the faith lessons) but it meant nothing, as not one of them attended Mass or even discussed any faith in the household.  She also believed in Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, among other things.  Basically, it felt like my mother wanted all bases covered, in case she died and one of the faiths was actually true, so she had all of us children baptized at birth.  In any case, both parents were too lazy to physically bring us to churches to explore faiths, so they always told us, “You decide what you want to believe in when you grow up.”  I went to an Episcopal boarding school one year.  It was my first time in a church, and I was enthralled by the architecture, the acoustics (I sang in the school choir), and the hushed air when the minister spoke.  The hymns were my favorite part, though, which made me think that perhaps I wasn’t feeling the message I was meant to receive from the Episcopalians. So I asked Connie, “Why do you go to church?”  At first, she laughed and told me that when she was little, her mother would get tired of the kids whining about going to Mass on Sundays and would yell, “Get up and come to Mass, or you’re all going to Hell!”  Then I said, “Why do you keep going now?  You could sleep in, or we could keep watching that show on tv, or we could all have a glass of wine – why do you feel you have to go to Mass, now that you’re grown up and Mom doesn’t need to nag you?”  She grew still as she thought about it, a little crease forming between her eyebrows.  Then she said, “Well, I think I go to say thank you.  God gives me every day of my life – every minute of every day.  And I have a really good life.  I’m healthy and happy, and I have a wonderful husband and a good job.  For all those days in my life, I think it isn’t too much for God to ask me to go to Mass for just one hour. An hour is such a small amount of time to say thank-you for everything He gives.”
 
For weeks, Connie’s words rattled about in my head.  Finally, I worked up the courage to ask her if I could come with her one time, to see what Mass was like.  She agreed and said I was totally welcome, but there was a little rule that I wouldn’t be allowed to partake of Communion because I wasn’t a fully initiated member of the church.  I thought, “that’s okay.  I’m just curious.”  Following her to Saturday night Mass was curious, indeed.  Upon entering the small wooden, multipurpose chapel on base, Connie dipped her fingers in a little basin of water (Holy Water, she explained), and genuflected with her dampened fingers; gently touched forehead, then sternum, then left shoulder, then right. I imitated her, the water leaving a cooling spot on my forehead. There were only a few other people there, so the carpeted chapel was very quiet. We slid into the wooden pews, and Connie pulled out the padded kneeling bench by our feet, and knelt.  She bowed her head and became very still.  I looked around at others doing the same, looked up on the alter to the large crucifix, studied Jesus’ bowed head.  And the pianist asked us to open our Catholic Book of Worship (hymnals) to a certain number, and we began to sing.  The music was meh.  But then there were readings from the bible.  2, to be exact.  It was a bit difficult to understand, because I was slightly nervous from all the rising and the sitting, and the responses to prompts that I was a stranger to.  Then the priest began his homily.  I figured out that after a reading from the Gospel, the priest does a homily to explain the Gospel in layman’s terms.  I could never have prepared myself for Father Ryan, though.  Here was a spritely little man in his mid-fifties, glasses on his nose, talking about how great the Rolling Stones are…what?!  He had us laughing and answering questions, and next thing I knew, I felt a “click.”  I started tagging along after Connie to every weekly Mass.  Eventually, perhaps feeling left behind, her husband joined us. Not once did Connie nag us, not once did she preach.  She just lived her faith, and we lifted ourselves to reach the level she seemed to glow from. The rhythm of prayer and response, song, and readings, began to feel comfortable and easy.  Every week, we all gave each other a sign of Peace during Mass, by shaking hands after the Lord’s Prayer, and wishing each other, “Peace be with you.”  And every time that happened, I felt the peace wash over me and I felt strong and refreshed, ready for a new start to a new week.  Dan and I went through the RCIA program and were both given our First Communion and were Confirmed on Holy Saturday Night before Easter that year.  
 
Within one month of each other, Connie and I found ourselves expecting our first babies.  Soon after, however, our husbands were reassigned to the U.S.  Connie moved to Maryland, and I moved to the armpit of Texas: San Angelo.  The best part of living in San Angelo (the ONLY part) was that my daughter was born there.  The rest is a blur.  Connie’s baby boy was born 11/12/92, and my daughter was born on 12/13/92.  She made me the Godmother, and I made her and Dan the Godparents.  She and Dan came for a visit when the kids were 3 months old – we celebrated Easter together and for a few days it felt like no time had passed.  Luckily, it turns out we have that kind of friendship, because 17 years went by before we saw each other again.  We tried to keep in touch, but life gets busy with jobs and kids, divorce, and moving.  Years later, I found myself in Colorado for a high school reunion, and Connie and Dan drove to my hotel to bring me to their new home.  Connie’s hair was blond, Dan’s was all salt and pepper, and mine was falling out, but as soon as we started talking, we were in our 20’s again, laughing and joking and comparing kids. Their son and my daughter, although raised apart since they were 3 months old, have turned into mirror images of each other.  We alternate between wanting to hug them and wanting to strangle them.  Connie confides in me that she has had ups and downs with her son, as I have had with my daughter, but through it all, she maintains an inner peace I wish I could find.  She gets angry like a normal person, but she bears no resentment, like I do. For her, forgive and forget go hand-in-hand.  That’s something I need to work on…  They also got on a plane and flew out to Canada to visit me a couple of years ago.  It’s so strange and wonderful to me, each time we are reunited, to find that nothing has changed.  Connie is still the kind of person that I strive to be.  She is patient and kind, she is forgiving and loving.  As I age, I realize how important it is to surround myself with people that I look up to; people who teach by example.  But there are very few people I meet that inspire me to be a better person, while making me laugh and appreciate life at the same time. I’m sure I am describing every Best Friend in the world, but this is different, because this is my Best Friend.  Since I get more discerning as I age, I find myself choosing to be alone, rather than have shallow friendships. If it weren’t for Facebook and FaceTime, linking me to the friends I have held on to, and to my Best Friend, I think I might go crazy in this winterscape called Jasper.  I mentioned the Girl Scout organization on Facebook, a couple of weeks before Lent, praising it for its liberal views, and the next thing I know, a huge box arrives in the mail from Connie, full of Girl Scout Cookies (and other goodies).  All it was missing was a big pot of steaming tea, strong, sweet, and milky hot.  And Connie.  And a warm greenhouse full of flowering plants…
 
I blink, look down, and find myself holding a little pot of deep purple african violets.  The dark green leaves are impossibly soft, covered in velvet that begs to be touched.  I look up, and I’m in the flower section of the Hinton Safeway, thousands of miles away from England.  Connie and I both live in the Rocky Mountains now – she’s on the Colorado side, I’m on the Canadian side.  There are just a few really big hills between us.  I brought the little plant home and placed it on my kitchen table.  It keeps me company while I abstain from Facebook during Lent, it’s cheerful purple petals reminding me that Easter is around the corner.  It stands in for the garden centres in my memories, while I raise a cup of strong, sweet, milky black tea towards the snow-covered mountains, to my best friend on the other side.  Cheers, Connie!
 

Lenten Lentils, LaLaLa

14 Feb 2013 4 Comments

by Suelinhess in Faith, Family, Lent, Moving, Roman Catholic, Uncategorized Tags: , ,

So far, resolutions are still surviving, although there are signs of rebellion everywhere.  My family was really big on making Lenten promises – my husband decided to discipline his potty mouth, younger daughter had a laundry list of promises (including running outside for 30 minutes everyday and no gaming/social media/texting for fun), and my son gave up gaming and vowed to run outside every day for 30 minutes.  Well.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday – Day #1.  First thing in the morning, as the children are thundering around upstairs, and my husband is waiting impatiently downstairs to drive them to school, he yells, “What the F**K is going on?!”  sigh.  And the kiddies come home from school, full of excuses as to why they are too tired to go out and suck in some fresh air.  FINE.  I will be perfect and do everything I promised, right? HA.

Well, I gave up my favorite thing in the world (besides the actual people I love), Facebook.  So to prevent temptation, I deleted the apps from my phone and my ipad, after changing the notification settings so I don’t get any emails telling me what I’m missing.  But then I found myself checking my phone every hour yesterday…only to find the app missing, boo.  So then I would do something lame like open up CNN or check my email.  And I wandered aimlessly for much of the day.  Withdrawal is not so fun.

I also made a quiet promise to myself that I would give this Godforsaken town a 2nd chance by doing something new every day.  Yesterday was supposed to be my day to visit the town museum.  I went.  Twice.  Both times it was closed for some unexplained reason. Attendant in the bathroom? Who knows.  And because I also promised myself I would not swear anymore, I was forced to sound ridiculous by saying out loud, “Tsk. Tsk.”  That’s it.  “Tsk. Tsk.”  And you KNOW what I really wanted to do was yell what my husband yelled up the stairs this morning.  sigh.  So I went to pick up my son from the elementary school, and he jumps into the car and exclaims, “MAMA, can we make Valentines cards for tomorrow?!  Homemade!  With like, chocolate Kisses stuck inside?!”  I haven’t done arts and crafts with the kids since we moved away from Hawaii, 4 years ago.  After all, my youngest is in 6th grade now, and tying them down to the kitchen table is like trying to wash a cat.  Possible, but not so fun.  So I thought, “why not?”  it was something new for us in Canada, I could rationalize.  Luckily, I’m a pack rat so our art supplies were in great abundance.  We bought some chocolate covered caramels wrapped in gold at the grocery store, and cut out the prettiest valentines out of contruction paper on the kitchen table.  Simon wrote out and decorated all of them, and carefully taped a candy inside each one. It was the best hour I had all day. 

So then we all bundled up and went to Ash Wednesday Mass at 7pm.  There was good news and bad news.  The good news was that our Nigerian priest from last year (who was a lovely man but whose English was incomprehensible) had been replaced with a sweet little Indian man with a very understandable sing-song accent.  The kids perked up to be able to understand the homily, and his enthusiasm brought smiles to our faces.  The bad news was that the choir still consisted of a lead singer with a microphone, and her warbling backups (3 little old ladies who loved trilling vibratto off-tuned harmony…very loudly).  My mother never taught me this, but I learned it from my friends with manners:  if you have nothing nice to say, do not say anything at all.  Well, I am trying to follow that advice with my spoken word (my written word is out-of-bounds…anything goes), so I was verrrry verrrry quiet during Mass.  We all held hands, I whispered explanations to my youngest son during the readings, and before we knew it, we were released into the cold night air.  Surprisingly, both the children, my husband, and I felt glad that we attended.  When we returned home, I found 6 emails in my inbox – all personal, from my big sister and friends – and I didn’t have to think about Facebook while I read them. My big sister, who is a proud Birkie-Lovin’ Pagan, called me a Lentil, and I am still laughing. It’s the new me: Lentil Sue. I might give you gas, but I am good for you!

Heavens to Murgatroyd, She’s Talking Religion…

30 Jan 2013 2 Comments

by Suelinhess in Faith, Lent, Roman Catholic, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

It is rapidly approaching that time of year for me to temporarily put down the excess in my life – the things I think I NEED when in reality they are things that I just desperately WANT – and to use that time to do the best I can to explore and improve my Faith. For Lent (beginning on Ash Wednesday, February 13th), I will be giving up my daily touchstone: Facebook. For those of you who use FB as a business contact list, or a place to play online games, this might seem like a trivial sacrifice; something akin to giving up chocolate. For me, I will be giving up the small window of joy I receive when I can see a friend, or a sister, or a cousin, from across the world, post a photo of themselves or their child, or post an update to their day as they are maybe waking up and I am going to bed. I will be giving up that warm feeling when my family and friends comment, laugh, or commiserate about my day. Living, as I have for the last year, in such an isolated place, Facebook has become my main link to my small extended family living in Australia, Germany, Hawaii, Florida, and Taiwan, and the only way to get all my busy friends who live in dozens of other countries, to come to one virtual meeting place to visit. It is truly the only thing that I love so much (other than my family), that I will miss keenly. Honestly, I’ve been living without wine for weeks now, have lived without coffee/caffeine before, and have given up different food groups with no problem. Facebook is my one connection to every single one of my friends and family who do not live in Jasper (pretty much the rest of the world). And while I crave that human connection, leaving it for 40 days will give me clarity and focus. I will email, text, call, write letters, and make a renewed effort to write my blog.

Easter will be on March 31st. I have been a shitty Christian for most of the year, and I need to contemplate why that is, and what I can do about it. It’s not so cool or popular to admit that I am grateful for the love that has come into my life and that I truly believe much of my good fortune came from God answering the only two wishes I ever wished in my whole life. Wish #1 was prayed on every first star I saw, every night from when I was a sad, unwanted 13 years old until I was 25: “Please Lord, give me a family that will love me as much as I love them.” It began to come true when Emily was born, through my meeting Markus, continued with the arrival of Hanna, and was finally complete upon the birth of Simon. Wish #2 began 19 years ago, and is still whispered up to the first star every night, including tonight: “Dear Lord, please watch over my family, and keep us safe and happy, and in love, and healthy, and kind to eachother, and having fun every day.” And as my prayers are answered, I think it’s only appropriate for me to say Thank You and return some of that love.

So, on February 13th, I will delete the Facebook app from my computer and phone, and I will ask that you email or snailmail or just go on enjoying your life for the remainder of the 40 days until Easter. I will also be enjoying my time away, living life and being present and prepared to listen to any messages to my soul.

Whoever your God is, or whatever you choose to believe, I wish you Peace. And here, help yourself to a slice of love. I have plenty to share.