Fastelavn

 It's been a couple weeks.  I haven't had too much heart to write about much.  I'll say that I spent a week thinking I had a 80% chance of having cancer and then found out I didn't.  And both Paul and I hugged each other on the couch and cried for a good long while as soon as I was told.

I still will probably have some radiation treatment - but it can be a lot less invasive and much more targeted now.  I still will most likely have to have my entire thyroid removed in the next year or so.  We still won't have any more children.

It's still very sad and hard.  I think it will always be?

But strangely the last few days I haven't thought as much about all of that because we found out Hadrian did not get into the Chinese Immersion program at our public school - a thing that I didn't think was possible?  And it's really thrown me because I had built an entire life and community and sense of specialness/belonging for Hadrian, in my mind, around that program.  I'm going to do anything I can to try and get him in next year (if that's even possible??) but I'm also trying to come to terms with it.  Seems to be the theme of my life the last month.

I asked him at dinner today if he would be ok still going to a new school even if he didn't get to learn Chinese and he said, "Oh...I will just be really sad..."  Later, before bed, I got down on his level and looked him in the eyes and said, "Hadrian.  I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you can have everything you deserve.  I'm going to try my hardest. I promise."  He got big, teary eyes and flung his arms around my neck saying, "I know, mom.  And I will give you all my Valentine's candy."

Tonight my friend Maren brought us fastelavnsboller, made with her own strawberry freezer jam and prodigious baking skills.  It reminded me of moving to Denmark in early February and those being one of the first pastries we tried, at Wendorff (the bakery that became our bakery).  

Fastelavn, if I'm remembering right, was a time to find joy before a season of loss -- also it was a time to stick a cat in a barrel and then use sticks to smash it out, but that's neither here nor there.  Anyway, it seems kind of like the beginning of a season of some loss for me right now, so I'm happy to have these boller to remind me of garden strawberries and wonderful memories.

(ALSO I just realized that my last dr. appt and that last post all happened on the 4th WEDNESDAY of 2021.  Freaking Wednesdays...)