Aaah the Time Space Continuum

We've been watching a lot of Star Trek: Next Generation lately...

Sometime after midnight the contractions started...by 2 my water broke...by 3 we were on our way down the center of two lanes bound for the hospital in the midst of a January ice storm (the center was marginally more clear than the actual lanes)...the same hospital where my Dad was a physician for around 30 years...the same hospital where I had been born 28 years before, where we visited my Nana when I was a little girl and she was sick, where I was cared for when I had surgery on my broken elbow at age 12, where my sister was a candy-striper, my brother an orderly, emt, paramedic, nurse...our first child was on her way. That was 16 years ago. My beautiful (in oh so many ways) daughter Belin has graced our planet for exactly 16 years today!

Happy Birthday Belin!

There is a little boy I have been writing to fairly regularly of late. I have never met him or anyone in his family, but that doesn't matter, love is boundless as is compassion. I so want this little angel to celebrate his 16th birthday with his family one day. His name is Jack and he has been valiantly living with Stage IV, High Risk Neuroblastoma for the past 5 years. His Mommy Jen wrote this on his blog on New Year’s Eve while the rest of us were contemplating the passage of time in our own ways:

“I hear Jack's words, 'Why can't we make a potion to live forever!', and feel a mother's humbleness that I am so limited to ease his fear. I can only reassure him, "God is working on it, Baby..." Certainly, Jack's brilliant mind could be the one to create such a solution if not to live "forever", certainly longer than a decade. However, neuroblastoma gets so little funding to create such a potion. It is a cancer that is wired to attack like High Speed DSL, and yet the advancements to understanding it seem to crawl like snail mail... “And still I hear, "Make a potion Mommy", ring in my ears... So, here's my idea, and I'm not sure how to go about it, but know y'all will be brilliant... What if we could get some real exposure for Childhood Cancer in the popular media? No, I'm not talking about turning Jack into Ashton Kutcher, and twittering his latest chemo escapades. But, what if the world could just see his face --- The face of life and hope and compassion and humor, and really make the opportunity to embrace the humanity of this innocent sufferring? What if we could do it in a way that wasn't frightening, but rather engaging, so as to move people to open their hearts and big pharmaceuticals to open their wallets for research? WHAT IF WE COULD DO IT WITH LAUGHTER AND JOY? What if we could to it on the Ellen Show? : )”

I promised Jack in an email this morning that I would add a link to his blog and ask my blog readers to send email’s to Ellen to get this “potion party started”. So please, please consider doing this simple task today…take a peek at Jack’s blog to read more about his story, then go to Ellen and write a brief note saying you’ve heard about this little boy Jack in California who has neuroblastoma and wants to be on her show to inspire grown-ups to create the right “magic potions” to cure cancer so that boys and girls like him can be grown-ups one day too….or something to that effect.

Here’s to babies and children, teenagers and their parents, grandparents and life flowing through past, present and future continuously connecting us with boundless love!