The Small Things

This week, I celebrate a big thing.  After three weeks of bone-numbing worry, my mother-in-law has been released from the hospital.  The stem cell transplant is working!  It feels as if we are all coming out of a pea-soup-type fog, but it's been hardest on my husband.

Yesterday, he sent an email to friends, planning a summer trip to Galena, IL, where we share a vacation home with his parents.  After reading it, I knew he was seeing better days ahead.

If you can imagine a land where snow falls no more, where darkness shows mercy, and where people are no longer saddled with a constant urge to wear pajamas and sit on their couches, then imagine Galena in July!  Imagine lazy afternoons basking in the shady vineyard breezes, taco dinners that cost less than a gallon of gas, hot tubs bubbling over with giggling children, and Latvian full-fat beef burgers setting a wall of logs ablaze, the smoke filling filling the lungs and taking years off a thin man’s life.  Mark your calendars for July 3-8 and get ready to party like….well, like less than you did when it was 1999, but more than we will when it’s 2099.

- Juliet