my Breast Cancer blog

The following article was previously published in Gainesville Parenting Magazine.

Danny wants to be a dog walker when he grows up. He’s had a bit of practice walking his Nana’s dogs and is pretty sure this career path suits him well. If it doesn’t pan out, he has another option.

“When I grow up, I want to be a football guy,” 5-year-old Danny told his daddy the other day. If he ever asks me for guidance, I’ll push him in the doggie direction. It may not be as glamorous a job as football, but it’s got to be easier on the body. Should Danny opt for football, though, and end up needing medical attention, his brother Joey can respond.

Joey wants to be a doctor. He sprang his decision on me one day while we were walking through the parking deck at North Florida Regional Medical Center. We happened to be on the level where doctors park their cars, and we were admiring all the fancy vehicles when it clicked for 7-year-old Joey: If doctors have nice cars and nice cars cost lots of money, then doctors must be rich. On the spot, he named his future profession. He will be a doctor—or a “blogger.”

“I don’t want a job,” Joey declared recently while strolling around the yard. “I want to be a blogger, like mommy.”

I guess blogging—and all the other writing I do—doesn’t seem like much of a job to a kid who just knows his mom is with him all the time. That’s precisely why it’s such an ideal endeavor for me. I get to stay home with my kiddos, write when they are in school, and then seem completely unemployed when they return home. Still, I have a job. Joey will realize this some day, when he figures out the ways of the world. For now, I’ll let him bask in the simplicity of life, until his lease on this gift runs out.

There’s something so innocent and basic about how children approach life, something that makes it easy to dream of walking dogs and fixing bodies one minute and playing football and blogging the next. Wouldn’t it be grand if adult minds could arrive, if only for a moment, at the very place where kids imaginations run wild—the place where everything seems to make perfect sense.

After Joey announced his plans to become a doctor and just before a school drop-off one morning, I noticed a slick, sporty little car driving next to our worn and tattered mini-van.

“Look at that nice car,” I commented to my boys. Looking in the direction of the woman driving this cool ride, Joey said with absolute certainty: “She’s a doctor.”

Yep, life is simple for little ones. And how fun it is to be the mom of two of the greatest dreamers around—and to have a job that allows me the time to marvel at the wonder of my glorious guys.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Chemotherapy, Family, Inspiration, Kids, My story, Resources, Side effects, Survivors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.