Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2007. Mattie was five years old and we were visiting my parents in Los Angeles! That day we took Mattie to Travel Town in Griffith Park. Travel Town is an amazing train museum! It is a kids paradise, especially if they love locomotion.... like Mattie. The Museum is filled with vintage train cars and the fun part is you can climb aboard and walk through them. I can't tell you how many times we visited Travel Town. I have to admit, I could never get enough of it either.... I loved the history and the exploration through a by-gone era! There are so many things I would never have done if Mattie weren't in my life, he literally opened up a whole new world to me.
Quote of the day: If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what grief is, bury him. ~ Giannina Brasch
This morning I went out to check the pool! I am hoping that after the light was fixed and the cracks were sealed that the water level would be stable! Forget it. After filling up the pool for four hours yesterday, the water level went down this morning. I am ready to pitch a fit right about now. So I am back to being Columbo and I will figure this out if it is the last thing I do! Meanwhile, I can't close this pool for the season, until I know where the issue is coming from and this may force me to have to resurface part of the pool to address this leak. Truly, I wake up each day and ask myself.... what else will go wrong today!? As many of you know, I have a running list of issues going on at the house and what makes all of this ten times worse is facing all of this alone. Some people do single well. I am not one of them! Which is why I got married at the age of 24. It was a life choice because I have always felt that sharing life with someone, and that means the good times and the bad, makes life worth living. It also makes the impossible times a little more possible.
Later this morning, my dad's physical therapist came over to do a session with my dad. Keep in mind that I have known this therapist since 2022. So that is three years together, in which she has worked with my dad and my mom. Because she has been with me all these years, she knows about Mattie's death and about my divorce. Any case, she has just bought a home with her significant other and we talked about the challenges of having children. She was explaining to me how becoming a mom is something that frightens her. Honestly if you aren't frightened about having children then to me, something is wrong with you. Having a baby is a HUGE commitment. Both the physical feat of carrying to term, labor, and delivery, but then the real challenge is parenting. Parenting is one of the hardest and under appreciated jobs there is in life. I know with Mattie, as soon as I was pregnant, a switch flipped in my mind. He became my number one, not myself. His health and welfare were always on the top of my mind. As daunting as this responsibility is, it is also one of the greatest gifts in life. As I told her today, when and if this happens, she will figure it out, she will find a way forward, and some how when pregnant and then seeing your baby, she will develop SUPER HUMAN MOMMY powers!
I may have been Mattie's mom, but it was Mattie's life that enabled me to learn volumes about myself. Mattie made me the passionate patient advocate that I am today. Through his cancer journey, I fought valiantly to save him and would have walked to the ends of the earth to find a cancer cure. Each time I help my parents or friends with medical concerns, guess who I think about? YES MATTIE. Mattie maybe physically gone from my life, but the lessons I learned from him have helped countless other people in my life.
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