Thanksgiving Week Relaxation

We had this week off of school for Thanksgiving. While I grumble about how our committing to Regina Caeli Academy this year means that the academic load is high and unremitting, regardless of students' personal circumstances, the bright side is that kids stay on track with important subjects like math, so when it comes time for Catholic holy days or secular holidays, there is generous time off during which we can completely relax without doing what I've always done: using our time off to catch up on more school!

This week I completed many administrative projects, much of it Thomas's medical stuff, but we also enjoyed a lot of relaxation.

Our firstborn, who is almost 15!, continued with his six sessions of driver's training. He also baked us his delicious, humongous bagels again.

I got to attend a cookie-decorating event at Fidelis with my daughter, which I normally don't do on a weekday evening. (There was a very cute puppy in attendance!)

One day, I even stopped my continuous bustle to serve tea and popcorn to the little ones while we read a chapter of Trumpet of the Swan aloud, something I can't remember doing in this past year but which used to be a weekly or sometimes daily time of bonding.

Thanksgiving preparation was a lot easier this year now that I could just ask children to make dishes in the days ahead and they required none of my supervision. In that vein, I was able to release guilt about not being a Pinterest-worthy homemaker, instead buying several of our dishes, which freed me up to have a very relaxed Thanksgiving day itself, spending some time doing puzzles, spending other time having numerous tearful moments remembering our Thanksgiving the year prior.

Mama and Thomas doing a puzzle

Margaret and Thomas doing a puzzle

Table setting: mismatched and like a magpie set it, but it still pleases us!

Thanksgiving menu 2021:

• Stuffed turkey from Trader Joe's (fully cooked)
• Turkey breast from Fresh Market (fully cooked)
• Mama's low-sugar sweet potato casserole
• Grandmom's cranberry sauce
• Stuffing from Fresh Market
• Mama's Brussel sprouts with bacon (This is the only dish I actually cooked with my own hands.)
• John's Fettucine Alfredo 
• White cheddar scalloped potatoes from Fresh Market
• Bread rolls from Trader Joe's

Desserts:

• Mama's low-sugar apple pie
• Mama's low-sugar pumpkin pie
• Mama's whipped cream

Thanksgiving 2021: A Miracle

Thanksgiving 2020 was when Thomas had been in PICU for a week and his gastric bleeding began. You can read the blow-by-blow by clicking here. His guardian angel had prompted his doctors to get him off the ventilator that morning, which may have saved his life later that day. His bleeding began and I sat by his bedside awake for 22 hours straight, leaving only to use the restroom, and my only meal that day was homemade pumpkin pie (delivered to the hospital by a friend!) eaten with one hand like a pizza because I was comforting Thomas and wouldn't let go. Chris joined me overnight, so I slept for two hours, before waking again to stay vigil. I cannot express how grateful we all need to be for the doctors, nurses, and staff who work on holidays like Thanksgiving because lives needs to be saved on those days, too. My looking back down memory lane brought me to many tears because I did not know then what the bleeding portended, but I do in retrospect and it is watching a horror movie unfold.

Yet here we are, a year later. And we have our beautiful son alive.

The day before Thanksgiving was the day that one of my online friends from the neuroblastoma community found out that her precious son has massive disease advancement and there is no more treatment available. That's how she and her husband spent their Thanksgiving day. What do you choose to do when you are walking through Thanksgiving day knowing it is your son's last one?

So, yes, our son suffered tremendous collateral damage from cancer. My whole focus this year has been daily, hourly habits helping his body learn to eat and stay alive and one day to grow. I wake repeatedly overnight for his care. My full-time job is his care. I'm more comfortable in a hospital setting than any other place outside of my home. I'm exhausted in every way it is possible to be exhausted. But we have our boy and his jubilant surgeon even feels confident that "Thomas is going to thrive!"

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On the day after Thanksgiving, we drove up to our friends' dairy farm for a day of casual visiting, eating pizza and homemade belated birthday cake, and exploring the farm.

Thomas dressed up as a flying purple people eater