day 15 – best! feeling! ever!

1. My mother telling me that her doctor wrote, in big bold letters, the word REMISSION on her medical file yesterday, after her last chemotherapy treatment. I haven’t shared with you that my mother had cancer.  I don’t know why, I seem to share everything else. Perhaps I felt that if I didn’t talk about it, it didn’t exist and I wasn’t giving my power to it. But the fact is, her cancer was very real and the night she called me in June to tell me she was starting chemo, tears flowed and I was afraid. She, on the other hand, was strong from the very first second she found out. She may have been scared but she never once showed it. She comforted me that night, she told me “I’m okay with this, I feel good about this, I just know this is going to help me“.  Yesterday was her last treatment and her tumors are no longer active and folks, that is THE BEST FEELING EVER!  My mother is amazing (and isn’t she stunningly beautiful?)  If she could get through chemo with a smile and still see the sunny side of life, she can get through anything and so can we all.  Don’t you just want to hold on to life so fiercely and fearlessly when you hear this?  Don’t you want to awaken the lion within you and roar (incidentally, my mother is a Leo). Mom, I’m so proud of you and I’m so very thankful to you and the Universe for conjuring this little miracle.  I wish I had more words to express how I feel, but I think Tom Robbins said it best when he said: “Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.”
2. Spending hours on the phone with a friend who lives thousands of miles away and feeling like she’s right next to you.   She pulls the giggles and the tears right out of you.  She really gets you, your pain, your joy, your insanity, and there is something so very comforting about it all that you want to record the sound of her voice for those low days.  After you get off the phone, your right ear burning from having the receiver pressed against it for hours, you think… how did I ever get so lucky as to have crossed paths with this one?  We all have them, those friends we think are just the coolest ever, kinda like the popular girl in high school.  Even though you are the biggest nerd in class, you feel cool by association if they so much as talk to you.  That’s what Cala does… she awakens something within me, a belief in myself that is sometimes dormant… hibernating until a warm spring breeze comes blowing through.  And the icing on this perfect cake is that she’s coming to visit during the holidays.  Soon, she WILL be right next to me.
3. Waking up thinking it’s Friday and then realizing it’s Saturday… that is pure bliss right there… you just wish you could bottle it up.
4. The exhilaration of running up those 250-something stairs on the mountain, landing in a cloud of morning fog, stopping to take it all in (and catch your breath) and feeling alive.
5. Hot soup on a rainy day.  Yeap!  Happy kid, right here!
6. Blasting this song in your kitchen as you drink a glass of wine and prepare pasta puttanesca.  It’s such a perfect day.
7. Realizing just how blessed you are.

What is the best feeling ever for you?