You know how people will often say (including me), “Enjoy the journey”? Well, I wasn’t enjoying this journey, despite the beautiful moments and people I discovered along the way, I found that I would have liked to learn all the lessons, sans the journey through cancer. Thus, my title “Riding the Wave.”
I was dropping my husband off at the Little Rock, Arkansas International Airport to fly home to California in the wee hours of the morning. He had just finished his stem cell collection AND transplant (7 weeks) and we decided he shouldn’t make the long drive home with me in the car to northern California, with me and our trusty, wonderful, yellow lab, Kip (aka: the Kipman, the Kipmeister, Kippers).
Instead, his parents would fly out a couple days ahead of him from their home in Florida and open up the house, buy groceries, pick him up at the airport and care for him. The idea was he would just get home and be in his own bed and recover, while I drove our car home, visited friends along the way, and, believe it or not, had a bit of a break from the daily grind of caring for him. I don’t want you to think I mean “grind” in a negative way, it just is what it is folks, a grind.
Little Rock has a great, quaint, little airport. You can park right out front in 15 min meters with little trouble. So I parked, got his suitcase and carry-on bag out of the car as he was too weak to do this. (Sometimes I wonder what people must think when they see what appears to be a fairly healthy male standing idly by watching his wife hoisting things around! Oh well.) We went into the airport and I got him all checked in. We had a little extra time, so we went to get some coffee, and behind me in line was this wonderful mother and her young adult son. They were bright and happy and smiling despite the god awful hour of the morning.
We struck up a brief, typical, conversation of strangers in an airport and in so doing I discovered that they had missed their flight due to running a little later than perhaps they should have and the long security line. I responded with the appropriate and typical show of condolences for their situation and the young man, smiled broadly and standing very relaxed with his hands in his pants pockets, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Eh, we’re just ridin’ the wave.” I smiled back broadly, as it was certainly my way of thinking after my experience of the past seven weeks in Little Rock (and much longer actually), and I responded with, “Wow! I like that! Much better than ‘Enjoy the journey’!” We had a wonderful moment then as we got our java and I left them at the counter and went to go and sit with Dave. Sharing some coffee before I sent my baby off through the security line to make his way home, alone, without me, in his weakened condition. Then Kip and I would set off for the 2200 mile journey across the southern states toward home.
I liked Riding the Wave because it seemed to better depict our situation. In other words, I’m riding it, one way or the other ’til it brings me into the warm sandy beaches. Sometimes its fun, sometimes calm, exhilarating, frightening, not so fun, full of wipeouts and at times, like cutting through butter when you get it just right. It even drags me back out again from time to time when I reach the shore. I was Riding the Wave alright and I’m still Riding the Wave. I’m hanging on – this sometimes fantastic ride.
