Serenity in the center with her sisters Felicity on the left and Charity on the right. 

Our daughter, Serenity, is celebrating a milestone birthday this year. I shan’t tell you which one, and if you try to guess you will probably miss by a mile. Oh, the stories I could tell you about this girl not wanting to grow up. But I’m saving those for when she becomes a famous author and some Big Name Magazine offers me an indecent amount of dollars for the childhood secrets.

But, in honor of this year’s achievement, I will tell you another story.

When Serenity was first diagnosed with cancer, I went into some kind of shocked denial. She says in her book The Thank You Room that I was all kinds of brave that first day. But I think I was in shock. And, mothers in shock just react and do whatever needs done to keep everyone breathing. Later, within minutes or maybe days, I faced the monster and walked all the way to the end of days with him in my mind. And, it was terrifying.

She was pregnant when we got the diagnosis. With their third son. So, for seven months we could do nothing but wait. And let our imagination do horrendous things whenever it got a chance to run ahead of us. “Don’t look this up on the Internet!” we warned one another.

But there was no need to look anything up. The specialist had given us enough horrifying facts. Like this one: “If  you need chemo and refuse it, you will die before you could deliver the baby anyway.”

Comforting words.

But, then, he decided chemo wasn’t the best course of therapy after all. So, we waited. And Jake was finally born all healthy and strong. We wept. We thanked God. We may even have danced a little for those first seven days.

Then, we went to the imaging center for the PET scans that would tell us if the cancer had traveled anywhere during those months of incubation. I fed Jake his first-ever bottle while Serenity submitted her body to the tests. It felt as if we had been holding our collective breath for seven months, praying the cancer would not spread to her lungs or her brain as it was known to do. Now, these last two hours were the longest wait of all.

When Serenity finally came out of the room, she said, “Well, the doctor didn’t say a lot. He mostly told me the radiation I’m going to have may give me a little arthritis in that shoulder when I’m in my sixties.”

Serenity in Her Sixties.

Those were the most beautiful words I had heard in the past seven months. Maybe in forever. Serenity in Her Sixties. An age that stretched far, far away on that cold, January day. And, here was a specialist telling us she could get there. She could live that long and be bothered by pesky old arthritis. What a wonderful problem to face. I wanted to kiss him.

I think about that statement every time Serenity has a birthday now. Sixty is still decades away. And she is healthy and strong and gorgeous despite a few more tussles with cancer.

And a little arthritis isn’t going to bother this girl. She has so many more stories to tell.

Happy Birthday to Serenity Beth. And may you, Dear Reader, find your own happy words to hold onto today.