Cupcakes

Day 28, awaiting the call for Anna's double lung transplant.

Cupcakes are a treat. When they are done right they are a very pleasurable treat. Tiffane's Cupcakes in downtown Livermore are really, really good and any fine dinner or gathering of people would do very well by including them for desert. Being a cupcake aficionado, Anna believes they are even better than Sprinkles and Kara's in Palo Alto. Can it be that little Livermore out in the outskirts can have something better than our former city? It appears so........ this is a very good thing. As parents who moved to a new city we need to have hooks for ways that our kids will come to see us. Maybe cupcakes will be one of those things.......

Of course we are making plans for when the transplant is done and I am finally home in Livermore settling in and beginning to make a life for myself. I will want Anna and Sara to come and visit me, not because we are in crisis but because they want to. It is hard to imagine another time than now and our complicated lives, but I am hoping it comes. I love going home to Livermore. I love my house and its position on the vineyard. I love being able to walk to see horses in someone's backyard and a very large bull in another, and the sheep grazing down the block. I also love to watch the grapes as they move through their cycle from bare vines to fully ripe purple grapes waiting for harvest.

Right now, as it has always been, Anna has been a driving and central force as to how we operate as a family. She is definitely the center of attention. She came to our house on Saturday needing a treatment as Casey had another engagement. He dropped her off and came back to pick her up. So Sara came too and we gathered together in our home. Wonderful, especially for their dad who is spending a lot of time alone lately because of this situation.

We pounded on Anna, Sara did afternoon treatment and Doug did the evening one, ate way too much food including cupcakes and loved being together. But what will it be like when those time consuming CF rituals end? It has been the magnet that has been so much of our family dynamic. What is it going to be like without it? Things are going to change so much. I know that we love being together, so I do not think that will change, but what will this new freedom and lack of impending doom and crisis one after the other be like to live with?

Anna started to talk about that a little today. Before today she has been unwilling to venture into the unknown of the future with new lungs. She just felt like she had no idea yet what it will be like, but today I heard that Anna would like to go white water rafting.......... really? And for a moment she asked, will I want to go to work? She is dreaming about the future. A very good sign. I know that she is ready to get on with the show. May all of her dreams come true. And, may all of our dreams come true with out the constant yoke of CF and its yucky lung disease. And girls, please come and see mom and dad, sometimes............