I am not sure I really need to write much more than the title and you will have a pretty good idea of today. I drove to Manch with Terry--he had to get labs done and I am not super booked most days so I enjoyed keeping him company. Then I did the NYT crossword puzzle alone (not nearly as much fun without Emily!) and did some weaving. Maggie and I went for a 3.5 mile walk in PEA and around town. She went swimming in the river and got relatively tired out. I saw my therapist, stopped at my favorite cheese shop and finally finished the too-long warp that I put on my loom like a month ago. I did learn a lot from it, but I am very tired of it and ready to move on to my next project (tomorrow!).
I had been postponing going in to the Cheese Shop because we know the owner well enough that we would have to have a conversation about my leukemia. As I've talked about before I am a little tired of telling people I have leukemia and I'm fine and I'm doing 5 rounds of chemo and ... so I had to wait for a day when I was in the neighborhood, in the mood and not neutropenic so I could eat the incredible double cream brie she sells. These things lined up today. At first Nancy didn't recognize me, then after a couple of minutes she said, "Cancer?" instead of "hello." I told her "leukemia" and that I was doing really well, had not had too rough a go of it and was expected to continue doing well. She asked a couple of questions and then we moved on to her telling me to tell Emily and Terry "hi," how was Emily liking U-Mass, etc. At the end of the conversation, she told me that God must have sent me in to her today because she was stressing out so much about one of her sinks being plugged and, now, she had been reminded that, really, it's not such a big deal. It was actually a nurturing retail interaction and I left with a big container of the world's best three bean salad and a nice big piece of this great brie. I felt badly for having underestimated Nancy and left, more importantly, with a renewed sense of admiration for her.
I am completely lacking in leukemia news or even thoughts. I think that's part of why I am "a little tired" of talking about it because it has moved into the background of my life for the most part and I don't like having to put it front and center and talk about it. I don't mind putting it front and center to do something about it, but just for chatting? Let's talk about something more interesting, like the weather.
Here's to a day of discovering more grace than we were expecting in other people and for me, and you, too, if you want it, ourselves.
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