guest blog post from my sister

I visited Sarah and Ted in the wake of round 3 of chemo.  Overall, I thought that Sarah's recovery, robustness and energy were far greater than expected.  We spent part of Labor Day weekend visiting our cousin's daughter, at Duke, including a tour of a 21st century mircro-dorm room.  Sarah was able to participate in that visit remarkably well.

With the air conditioning out, we spent Labor Day on the front porch, which was a lot of fun for a New Yorker with little access to the great outdoors, including bugs and thunderstorms.

On Tuesday, the kids went back to school and Sarah and I went to the hair salon to get her wig cut to custom bangs.  She looks great and is both positive and self deprecating.  Her confidence and convictions in her opinion on all things have not suffered one iota.

We took her daughter to school and visited her spouse's immaculate classroom, where he is teaching numeric rounding by asking them to imagine out of which classroom door they would flee if a python suddenly fell out of the class ceiling.  I kept glancing up and noting the closest exits. The 8 year old is enjoying school and has gotten tall.  She has cut her hair, which has changed her look from early Brooke Shields to Rita Hayworth as Gilda.  The 12 year old is tall and strong, with a passion for skateboarding and a willingness to test his parents' rules.  He is becoming quite handsome.

With Sarah's physical recovery from chemo progressing faster than expected, I dedicated my efforts to helping out with the housekeeping on my last day.  I cleaned both kids' rooms from top to bottom, noticing that under the beds of 12 year old boys, one can find a lifetime supply of lego pieces, rubber bands, doodles, and unattached electronics cords, and underneath 8 year old girls' beds, once can find a dozen unmatched American girl doll shoes, an ark full of unpaired small stuffed animals, and a remarkable variety of hair accessories.  To round this out, I decided to clean under Sarah and Ted's king size bed, out from under which I swept up enough Whitey fur (their old dog who died in 2011) to create a new stuffed Boston Terrier.  Sarah mentioned that her hope was that she got just sick enough that Ted would let her get another Boston Terrier.  Despite Sarah's sentimental pleadings and borderline hoarding tendencies, I successfully discarded the pile of fur.  8 loads of wash, one dinner, and several of rounds of dishwasher cycles later, Ted returned home from work and broke out into a grin.  For the first time in the decades I have been visiting them, he asked if I could stay longer than my scheduled trip.  I felt wonderful.  I hope no one comes to visit me - they might look under my bed.