Friday, March 28, 2014

Friday, March 28, 2014

Tonight's picture was taken in March of 2009. That day we took Mattie for a walk in our neighborhood to get some fresh air. Funny how March in 2009 was more spring like. The cherry trees were in bloom. Unlike now, where everything just seems grey and winter like. Despite fighting cancer and being in a wheelchair, Mattie claimed a stick. No walk was ever complete for Mattie without finding a stick to take home from the journey. What a stick collection we had developed over the years!!! Our commons area was FULL of them! 


Quote of the day: Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly ... and if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place. ~ WM. PAUL YOUNG


I want to thank so many of you who have emailed me to wish us luck on Saturday night as we accept the Flame of Hope award at the Georgetown University Hospital Pediatric Gala. Peter and I have been working on what we plan on saying as we accept our award and I suppose in my typical fashion I make things much harder on myself. We could just go up there say a few words, say thank you, take the award, and sit down. But somehow that isn't me. Nor would I feel this would do justice to Mattie's battle and why we started the Foundation. Peter will speak about the Foundation and highlight our activities for the audience and then I will spend a few minutes talking in a personal manner about what the award means to us. This has been a very well thought out and crafted speech. Or so I hope! I realize one thing about words.... words have much more of an impact when they evoke feelings. Therefore, it is my ultimate goal to convey a message filled with feelings and through feelings I hope people will remember us and Mattie Miracle. At least enough to want to visit our website and learn more about us!

Today we had a surprise visit from Peter's brother, sister-in-law, our nephews, and niece. Nat, our 17 year old nephew was in town looking at Georgetown University. Peter and I know Georgetown all too well. Peter is a graduate of Georgetown and of course we lived at Georgetown with Mattie during his treatment. I love photos and therefore wanted to capture this moment in time! From left to right is Peter, Will, Sydney, Nat, and me. Will and Mattie were actually about two years a part in age. So literally in our family it went Nat, Sydney, Will, and Mattie. This photo is somewhat bittersweet, because as you can see our Mattie is looking down at all of us. For me Mattie will always be stuck at age 7, yet when I see Will, I realize, Mattie would really be closer to Will's age now, than the little boy I remember. It is hard to wrap my head around this, but just like Mattie is frozen in time, to some extent, I too feel frozen in time. My friends are parenting teenagers and to me, I feel chronologically younger...... I will always be younger..... stuck parenting a seven year old child. Putting that aside, it is always nice to see our nephews and niece and it was interesting to see and hear about college campuses through their eyes!