Hope is the thing...

 

 

I have no bad news to report. I should begin, after three months absence, with that assurance. John remains well, and his stamina has continued to improve, but the passage of three months has left interesting things to share.

In the world of demographics, our home could be described as the "New Traditional Family":
A confused aging Baby Boomer father - that would be me.
The second wife, who is a celebrity of sorts with her own career and much more than my truest friend.
The twenty-something son, a professional student, living in the basement apartment and visited regularly by his girlfriend and other cast members - usually around dinner time.
The college student daughter who comes and goes, talking to friends in tow or by cellphone.
Two rather old dogs, one blind and forever running into things and the other overweight and grumpy.
Several placid goldfish, who don't seem to mind all the confusion as long as they get a little food and water now and then.

There is a backstory for each of us, including the nearly two years now that we spent with John in his treatment for leukemia and receipt of a bone marrow transplant. So with that bit of background, an update. There are a couple of photos that I've posted above because Blogger won't load them within a post today.

Next week, a dress Courtney designed will be part of a fashion competition. It was submitted by a professor from her Spring SCAD term, where she designed it for a class. She and Debbie decided to use the fashion show as an excuse to buy new outfits. A day of shopping to celebrate.

Courtney returns to SCAD, here in Atlanta, this Fall, and plans to stay in the dorm. Her living with us has been great fun for all, but especially for Debbie. The two of them have bonded closely, and I often find myself the comedic stereotype of the hapless father who is present, but clueless, in the midst of all the girl-talk.

Debbie, and her firm, will be featured next month in the Georgia Bar Journal for the pro bono work they did in response to Katrina. I went along with her to the ABA Annual Meeting in Hawaii last month.

John spent much of the Summer coping with a case of the Shingles, which is a painful return of the Chicken Pox virus that can happen to bone marrow transplant recipients because of their immature immune system. The dormant virus travels to nerve endings in the skin, where it surfaces in what looks like second degree burns that cover one side of the chest, neck and sometimes the face. The effect on the nerves is much more painful than the pox on the skin, and John spent weeks unable to go out or even wear a shirt.

It had to have been emotionally hard for John to have seen his life looking up after his successful one-year tests only then to be set back that way. He doesn't really complain, or even talk, much about such things though. Instead, he did something rather remarkable.

John spent most of the Summer writing a book. It is a "graphic novel" technically, which is in long-form to comic books as novels are to short stories. Anyway, the story is somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and is funnier than C.S. Lewis. He metions it in his Live Journal (http://johnvscancer.livejournal.com/) periodically.

The first draft took a month or so to write. He shared it with friends, who gave input. Then he went back and drew/wrote a second draft. Interestingly, it was the ending that he struggled with - how to bring the plot lines together without being obvious, rushed or trite - closing a song with a finished chord.

We all read the draft up to the last chapter, as John worked on it, and everyone talked through how it should end, with enough eager suggestions to "fill a book." Earlier this week during dinner, the four of us had a lively talk about the ending: the heroine goes home, she stays, the hero goes with her, she leaves and returns, she wakes up from a dream. There were plenty of suggestions, each of which John refuted based on his sense of the characters' personality and the curve of the plotlines.

Just before the conversation wound down, I said, "I think John knows how it will end. John will find it somewhere inside, but he has to figure it out himself." It was the kind of thing you say when you are absorbed in a play and caught up with the characters, only I was watching the story of John, rather than those in his book.

The next day, John told me he had stayed up late into the night and written the ending. It is good, and so is his own story - so far.

I had put this journal away, hoping to leave the pain of the past few years behind with it and move on. I bought that old wooden dream boat, had it shipped from the north and realized there is a LOT of work to do. I've been busy, but a melancholy shadow lingers and reflection can be enlightening.

I'm working on a new website as a fun project. I'll come back with some details. Life, fortunately, goes on, and perhaps so should these reports.