Monday, July 27, 2015

Monday, July 27, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2007. Mattie was playing with his Lincoln Logs and as was typical for Mattie he loved to include a car in his creations. Mattie built a place to park his car and as his big smile indicated, he was very happy with his final product. Mattie could spend a good portion of his day building and creating, and always pulled me into his play schemes. The irony was before I had Mattie I really did not like playing with Legos, blocks, logs, cars, or trains. But Mattie trained me well and all of this became second nature to me. I learned to understand the mindset of a little boy as well as how to engage such an active and inquisitive fellow. 


Quote of the day: When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heav'n so fine, That all the world will be in love with night,  And pay no worship to the garish sun. ~ William Shakespeare


I have been working all day on various things to get ready for the World Conference of Psycho-Oncology that Peter and I are attending this week in Washington, DC. In addition to presenting at a Symposium on Friday, we are also hosting an exhibit booth at the conference for three days. So I worked on pulling out all the materials for the booth and organizing them. It is a strategy to transport them effectively to the conference hotel, because typically I am used to shipping items to their destination. We have never done a local exhibit booth.

This evening, someone sent me these wonderful photos from the George Washington University. They are strings filled with praying cranes. I suspect there are 1000 cranes strung on these strings! I am not sure who sent these photos to me because they were sent to me through a phone number and not an email address. However, this is clearly someone who knows my attachment to the origami crane. 

When Mattie was battling cancer, my good friend Junko and her mom created 1000 praying cranes for Mattie. With each hospital admission, we traveled with their amazing creation of cranes, and the cranes hung over Mattie's bed at all times. Now, these cranes can be found in Mattie's bedroom hanging from the ceiling serving as a reminder to me of my friend's greatest wish..... Mattie's recovery. 

An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy creatures (others include the dragon and the tortoise), and is said to live for a thousand years. The legend of the 1000 cranes was actually very touching and it involved a young child by the name of Sadako in Japan, who was the victim of the atomic bomb and developed Leukemia. Her story is very meaningful and has been inspiring people all over the world for generations to create origami cranes to support those undergoing challenges and illnesses. 

The Story about the Cranes

http://origamiancy.com/2009/11/origami-cranes/