How We Got Here

the mamaversary post

In life, as in my mamaversary posts, I try to avoid surprise and astonishment about the speed with which we change from worn out mothers of toddlers, infants, and little league players to mothers of people who drive. I try not to wonder how we got here. Today, my oldest son is twenty-three, and I’m thinking about exactly how we got here.

First, I made come true the earliest and biggest dream of my life—to marry Michael Bohon. A year and a half later, we started the parenting thing. I’ve been writing about being mama on this blog for fifteen years so the “how we got here” of that is pretty well chronicled - the potty training, parents as teachers fiascos, sports, sports, sports, concerts, and plays.

I have very big feelings about life, which I managed to carry into every stage of motherhood - the mamaversary posts as my witness. By my twenty-ninth year, I didn’t really need a cancer story to dramatize my experiences, but I got it anyway.

I learned about the cancer in an exam room when my oldest was five, the middle one four, and the youngest only a positive sign on a pregnancy test. An hour later, as we drove home, I clung to a pillow and thought of heaven - whatever that was - versus everything I had ever heard about cancer treatment, and I knew that I was not afraid to die. I was afraid to fight.

I did it anyway, which I will not describe because it wasn’t even all that brave. Fighting cancer is not much of a choice once you have it. I’ve known people who did not treat their cancer, but not many. Most people fight, which is a super aggressive term for letting things happen to you - things like surgery, radiation, and chemo.

I let these things happen. I let them happen even after the fourth time they had happened when I told Dad, “I never want to do this again.” I let them happen when I would rather have gotten famous or rich or younger. I guess that was fighting, and today I have the reward because I’m still alive when John is twenty-three and Drew is twenty-one and Jake drives.

In May of this year, I danced with John at his wedding. His wedding. I never dreamed that could happen in 2005 when a doctor said “rare’, “aggressive” and fifty percent survival rate. I never guessed it when I clutched a pillow and thought maybe I’d rather let the cancer ravage than buck up and face it.

Like many things I’ve written since 2005, cancer is really just the metaphor here. What I’m saying is that we got here because we fought for it. All of us. We let bad things happen and let good things happen to someone else. We accepted our own good things as gratefully as we could. We did our homework, went to practice, took the tests. We made up when we fought, talked nice when we were grouchy (sometimes), stayed together, watched a movie the other person liked, went to events we might have skipped on our own, and tried when it would have been more fun to not.

Life doesn’t necessarily require our active participation. I mean, most of us can stay alive without trying all that hard. To be alive in a life you want takes something. This twenty-third year of my motherhood in which we celebrated two college graduations, one wedding, one engagement, one twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and the fact that we pretty much have our own second language with all the inside jokes we’ve shared - I’m not really wondering how we got here.

I know exactly how. We fought for it. And I am very, very proud.