2.13.11

AYNSLEY:

Mom sounded great today! She ate well, wasn't sick, had lots of energy and entertained lots of visitors. One of her friends brought by more cranes today-we've been receiving them for over a month now and some people have gotten very creative. I'm not sure how well the photo on the bottom shows them off, but those are crane flowers in the middle and look beautiful. The photo on the top is the wall behind her bed-there are tons of cranes creating a backdrop (and the awesome scarf that's hanging to the far left is handmade by my future mother in law-so pretty!). As you can see, her room is a virtual cocoon of healing wishes. She is so enveloped in love, prayers and goodwill.

The best part of the day was just talking with her about normal stuff. I used to have the habit of calling her anytime I was walking for more than 10 minutes, just to fill her in on the day, and more recently, talk wedding shop. Since she's been sick, this obviously hasn't been happening. On the one hand, half of the time I'm physically with her, so I don't need to call. On the other hand, now when I'm walking to the subway, or just taking a walk on a break from work, I miss her bitterly. But today she asked me what I was working on. So I told her about a grant I had received to run a new fitness program at the Y and how I've been working on a lot of home study and how it's a really amazing exercise program (if you're interested, check out fitnessanywhere.com), I told her about acupuncture, I told her I still haven't found a wedding dress, I told her about the enormous roach in our apartment and how I wasn't sure who screeched louder: me or Gary. (Ok, for the record, I screamed louder. I tried to smash it with a shoe, but the first one I grabbed was Gary's dress shoe and he wouldn't let me kill it with that. So I used one of his sneakers, and he grabbed my hockey stick-not sure which one of us finished the roach off, but I wouldn't touch the corpse, so Gary threw it out. I like that we both used weaponry that belonged to the other person. Gearing up for married life, I guess.)

I have been so thankful for all of the generous notes, emails, texts and blog posts: so many people have responded to my worries with real words of wisdom and love. And good things to keep in mind. For all of you who have thanked Ross and me for the blog...you have no idea. Thank YOU for reading, for keeping us in your hearts and Mom in your prayers. For keeping Dad fed, keeping Mom company, making the room beautiful and keeping me (relatively) sane.