Cancer sucks.

Childhood cancer sucks. Cancer sucks. Period.

Our friend Superhero Ari is in the second year of his three-year chemo treatment for acute lymphoblastic lymphoma. He's doing well, although the recent death of an age-mate has shaken him and his family. Please watch the video and do what you can to help. I sure wish I knew how to embed it, but, well, I don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGS4yE5v9rM

I am a rock

BabyGirl was recently introduced to Simon & Garfunkle. Their music is great for long drives when she needs to rest but won't put up with lullaby music--enough vocal and musical variation to be interesting, yet smooth enough to be soothing.

She requests "I am a Rock" over and over. You know, the achingly sad one about someone who's been so deeply hurt by love that he lives surrounded by impenetrable walls. The one that sounds so nice, as long as you're not listening to the words.

But she is. She's listening to the words. Intently.

I get the song because I've been hurt by love that deeply. I get the song because I'm 43 years old and I've been around the emotional block a time or two. She's six, and as far as I know, still thinks boys are kind of goofy alien creatures.

There's been only one great loss in her life: not being raised by the ones who created her. Can a first-grader intellectually understand the Primal Wound? I doubt it. Can a first-grader feel the pain of that loss? I'm sure she can.

So we listen to it over and over. And my heart aches for her pain that I'll never fully comprehend, that my magical mommy kisses will never be able to fix.

A winter's day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.

I am a rock, I am an island.

I've built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate;
I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain,
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.

I am a rock, I am an island

Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried.

I am a rock, I am an island

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me,
I am shielded in my armor;
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock, I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.