Monday, September 17, 2012

Monday, September 17, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2009. Peter and I took Mattie to New York City to start an experimental treatment at Sloan Kettering. The day before the treatment began we took Mattie to the Empire State Building and rode up the elevator to the 102nd floor. It was a beautiful and clear day as you can see, and the building had little to no tourists that day which made getting around and accessing the elevators VERY easy. Mattie enjoyed his two visits to New York City. He seemed to love the yellow taxis, the actual hotel (which spoiled him, especially when they knew he was a cancer patient), the gifts Linda sent him from DC, and spending time with our New York friends.


Quote of the day: Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. ~ Voltaire

 

This weekend, my friend Tina sent me several pictures! Since Tina has been known to have butterflies land on her, I wasn't sure what this was a picture of at first. But as I looked closer, I realized Tina was at Mattie's memorial tree. Tina and her family went to Mattie's tree to decorate it in honor of Mattie's third anniversary. A beautiful gift to hear about and receive!

 

Tina bought these wonderful decorative butterflies at a floral supply store and then sprayed them with glow in the dark paint. So not only does Mattie's tree have all these wonderful butterflies on it, but in theory they glow at night! I look forward to driving passed Mattie's tree one night soon to see if I can find these butterflies.





This weekend, I had the opportunity to see the movie, Julie and Julia on TV. I was a big Julia Child fan growing up. One of the things I used to love to do on Friday evenings when I was a teen was talk on the phone with my friend Karen, as we both watched and critiqued Julia. Karen was at her home, and I was at mine, but we were connected by phone and Julia! We had a lot of fun observing this cooking show, watching what Julia dropped all over the kitchen, the way she was communicating with her audience and her love and almost affection for food!

As I watched the movie this weekend, it brought back many memories of me watching Julia Child as a teen! However, though the movie captured Julia Child's story of her start in the cooking profession, it also intertwined the story of Julie Powell. In the movie, Julie turned 30, felt directionless in life, she felt she never completed anything, and felt like she needed focus and wanted to become invested in something. Julie took on the challenge of cooking all 500+ recipes from Julia Child's first book in one year's time. Not only did she cook the recipes but she wrote about cooking, Julia, and her journey on a self-created blog. Julie would blog each and every night, not knowing who her audience was, whether they appreciated her writing or even related to what she was expressing.

The development of Julie's blog fascinated me. Naturally this story was embellished in a Hollywood movie studio, but putting that aside, I related to Julie, why she wrote a blog, what she got out of the blog, and how this blog made her feel connected to the world. Writing gave her meaning, she felt connected to something bigger than herself, and she felt that through her writing she was making a difference in other people's lives.

One begins writing a blog typically on one topic, for example, with Julie her blog focused upon cooking and my blog focuses upon Mattie's cancer battle and our journey with grief. Yet it is impossible to remain true to topic all the time. I feel it is impossible because as human beings we are multi-dimensional, so over time on this blog you have learned a lot about me, my family, and my close friends. The intention of the blog was not to necessarily cover all these dimensions, but because I do not live in a vacuum, I have found that Mattie's grief not only impacts Peter and I, but all of our family and friends, and the Team Mattie community. It is within this blog, that Team Mattie also remains alive and well. The point I am trying to make is in Julie's blog, though she wrote about cooking, she also wrote about her disappointment with herself, the issues she had with her husband, and other things that had nothing to do per se with cooking. Yet what was happening in her life was intertwined with Julie the cook. I relate to this component of the movie deeply, because I imagine for my faithful readers, you have become aware of my own cast of characters that play integral roles and parts in my life. Seeing the commonalities between myself and Julie fascinated me, we both started a blog for different reasons, but what we get out of blogging is several common threads.

I am aware of the fact that Julia Child was not enamored by Julie Powell's blog and felt that Julie was using Julia Child to make a name for herself. I certainly can't speak to this dynamic, but I can attest to the discipline, patience, commitment, energy, and love that goes into writing a blog each night. Just like Julie, when someone writes to me about how my writing has touched them or made a difference in their life, I too feel like I am receiving a very special gift. Certainly in the beginning of our grief process, I felt as if my readers wanted to hear from me, and truly relied on this communication. Since I felt others were relying on me, it forced me to function, to have to engage with the world (or a computer), and to tell my story. In essence the blog is another one of my lifeboats.