In Verses & Song

In the few days of December that we were home, as Sadie slept and we tried to find answers to  post-surgical symptoms — I spent a lot of time on the phone with the clinics and hospital we had been at in New Orleans — and seeking second opinions at others. This would lead to Sadie being accepted as a patient at St. Jude soon after, a blessing which we will always be grateful for. Somehow, in the midst of all the research & phone calls, and my determination to get-the-Christmas-tree-up-or-else….I found time to do something more. A couple months before Sadie’s diagnosis, they began writing short poems and prose. When they shared them with me, I was reminded of how I also began writing at fourteen, and of how writing had been a way to express my changing emotions and understanding of the world. I encouraged them and told them that they could be published, and they replied at the time that they would like very much to be published when they grew up. And I told Sadie — you don’t have to