A moment

The house was suspiciously silent, so I went searching. After all, the last time I noticed the sound of silence around here T. and J.P. had snuck contraband ketchup upstairs and were industriously applying it to a framed photograph. No such disaster this time. I located B. immediately and found him... engrossed in his reading. 

I was struck by that the way any parent would be -- struck by the passage of time and the flowering maturity of my child. But the moment hit me in another way. When I was diagnosed with cancer two-and-half-years ago he couldn't read. T. was two. The calculus I made then, the one I make now, was, "If I can hold this thing at bay for a year, that's half her life." 

Every good month, every year of quality, is precious to us fully grown folks, of course. You don't need kids to value life (in fact, some might argue...) But children add urgency to those calculations. Even six additional months is meaningful percentage of their lives. It's enough time to see change; a new steadiness, perhaps, a more refined skill, a broadening of empathy and compassion. 

And so I fight. Even at a despairing moment like this one, I fight. I fight to see a little more of the story emerge.