Staring

Okay, so I don't want to make anyone sad or anything, but I know that I do. So sorry. Just apologizing up front because I am feeling sad today. Life is not a bowl of cherries...sometimes its the pits (I just got a card that said that...hah!) We are continuing our climb up the mountain of normalcy. Ally is doing so good. SO GOOD. Even better than she was last week. She is being goofy and doing silly dances and all the things I remember about my old Ally. My old Ally and wow I can hardly even remember it, but at times she comes back out. Everyone around her is noticing it. And if you think about, and think about that first month where she couldn't lift her head off the table, she was battling two things. First, she was still battling the leukemia cells in her body, and secondly she was also battling the effects of the chemotherapy. A double dose of HELL (no better word for it). So now, in my opinion, the leukemia cells are gone and she is really just fighting the side effects. And that has to help matters some.

Today, in our efforts to climb the normalcy mountain, I piled all three kids in the car and we did something very simple. We went to lunch. We went to Marion's Pizza, where I knew I could get a significant amount of calories into my little girl's body. I even let them get a COKE! (a rare treat) We played in the game room and Ally even won a stuffed animal from the claw machine for her little sister. In her former days, Ally was the QUEEN of the claw machine. She is the master. Then we got back into the car and drove all the way to Centerville to a toy store that has these things the kids are collecting: we call them squishies. I think they are actually called zoo mania or something like that. They are only 25 or 50 cents, but the kids all collect them and trade them, etc. Ally even spent some of her money from the hair fairy on a new art kit. A continuation of normalcy hit when the kids played outside for two hours with our neighbors the Holsteins and the Finns. Usually it is too hot, too cold, too windy, etc for Ally. But today...not a word. She just wanted to hang out with her friends. Just like old times. You can get the picture on how good she is doing.

Tea Party in the Tent

My heart is so happy when she is like this. I actually heard her humming yesterday...just walking around the house happily humming a little tune. Little things like that can make me weep tears of joy. She has absolutely no idea that this disease is life-threatening. She has no idea that it is one of the rarest things that can happen to a child. The innocence of kids is probably a great thing to deal with something like cancer. In simple terms, she just thinks this is the way life is. Well, sort of. She doesn't feel sorry for herself. She is not self-conscious of being thin or bald. She doesn't worry about things she will miss. Maybe this is also because she has the ultimate laid back personality, always has. She can handle this. Of course, she doesn't want to be poked by a needle or to be throwing up in the middle of the night, but for the most part she takes it all in stride.
Sometimes, though, no matter how good things seem to be...I still get hit with that punch-me-in -the-stomach feeling of sadness. Last night I was showing Jerad the blog entry made by Erin Cobb and there is Ally's beautiful picture. And every time I pull up our Light the Night page, well there is her picture again. My beautiful smiling girl who knew nothing about any of this. It just makes us so sad to look at old pictures of her. It is really a tough pill to swallow. It upsets everybody, I know. My Dad told me the same thing tonight. On a daily basis I really don't even notice the baldness..the skinniness actually bothers me more. Except when I look back....

And this brings me to my final thought for today. Over the last ten days, we have emerged from our bubble. The zoo, the toy store, Build-A-Bear, the ice cream store....and everywhere we go I see people staring at us. She always wears a hat, but they still see it. They can't help it, I know. It's like a car accident...you have to look. A sick child..people wonder. To us, it is so normal, even to her friends/our neighbors they don't even see it anymore. But in public, we can draw stares like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes I even think...oh wait, do we know them, are they looking at us because they know us?? And then I realize that is not the case. The other day at the zoo I looked over and Ally had taken her hat off. She was hot and needed a breather. I glanced around and everyone around us was looking. I quickly told her to put the hat back on. She said "Why?" And for a minute I couldn't answer her. What was I supposed to say...well, honey, because society would prefer if you have hair. I muttered something about making people uncomfortable and then she put it back on. So this is another thing I have weighing on my mind lately for when school starts. I hope those Valley kids just take a good look, because I know they have to, and then they realize that its just Ally. And hair doesn't really matter.