Fairies and Freckles

I try to always be positive.
I don't want my children to grow up with a sense of doom or to see my uncertainty of what the future may hold for Zoe.
I want them to wonder and imagine and I want to not worry anymore.
I've decided that I couldn't control the fact that Zoe got cancer.
We did everything we were supposed to do for her.
It's something that happened that there is no answer for.
I can't focus on the whys anymore.
I don't look at online groups for parents of childhood cancer patients.
So many of them are angry and need an answer.
Maybe there isn't an answer.
Maybe it just is.
You know how you are cooking something and you like down and see a hair in the food and wonder "how did that get in there?"
I think that's how it came to be with Zoe.
She has a stray hair in her DNA.
Something I couldn't control.
As a mother you feel a lot of responsibility when you are pregnant.
Did I eat the right things?
Did I stay away from the toxins of the world?
Did I take an ibuprofen too early on in the pregnancy?
The questions and the guilt will keep you up at night.
I can't do it anymore.
The blood in our bodies is a complex entity.
We take it for granted until something goes awry.
I can't read articles like this anymore...
The USA Today stories celebrate successful increase to an 80% cure rate, and we too celebrate those successes. But, that's not the whole story. They neglect to consider what the docs and researchers call "Excess Mortality"....kids that live at least 5-years but die within 30 years either from the original cancer or long-term effects. If you include those, the "cure rate" drops to 2 in 3... People Against Childhood Cancer

It's too much.
I will continue to push her to be better than she thinks she can be.
I will tell her she has the power to be more than she used to be.

She can overcome any hurdles she comes upon in the future.

I want to imagine that Zoe will grow to be an old woman.

That she will have kids and she will get crabby with them at times.

Kids that she will rub noses with and who she will tell about her struggles when she was young.

That she will cherish them always and tell them wonderful stories.

Wonderful stories of fairies who live under the toadstools in the yard.

Because life is too interesting to worry all of the time.

It will still be in the back of my mind.

But it will be offset by magical fairies and wonderful thoughts of the freckles on Zoe's nose.