First of all, thanks to everyone who stopped by yesterday and joined us in our Sarah Celebration.   It’s hard for me to fathom that it has been ten whole years since our lives were changed so irrevocably.  Eating dinner with her last night and looking across the table to see her sweet, precious face just about brought me to tears. Thankful, indeed.

We spent some time talking over what each of us remembered from her diagnosis and subsequent treatment.  She said that she was glad that she doesn’t remember a lot of it and I told her that I was glad, too.   I will never be able to forget the pain of that season but I’m so thankful that I can carry those memories and she doesn’t have to.

And now on to the  subject of today’s post . . .

We had to come home from our Wild Anniversary Adventure a day early because Steve got sick with an earache, sore throat, terrible cough, and general awfulness.  But, oh well!  We had a wonderful time while we were there.

A highlight of the trip was a bike ride we took through a gated community in Edenton.   When we stopped by the Visitor Center and asked one of the ladies about the neighborhood she basically said, “Yes, there’s a gate, but there’s room to get bikes around the side of it.”

And since she represented the town of Edenton, we felt like we’d gotten our official permission to scoot on past the gate and take one of the most serene, lovely rides I’ve ever experienced.

I can’t begin to describe how amazing this place was.  We rode for a couple of miles and saw nothing but wheat fields, trees, grass, and maybe one or two cars.  I felt like I had been picked up and plucked down in the middle of bike rider’s heaven.

To make me all the happier, we discovered a cemetery in the middle of our ride.  I wanted to get a little closer to take a few pictures but since it was enclosed in a gate . . .

. . . I didn’t think I’d be able to go inside.  Imagine my happiness when the wrought iron gate swung open!

Steve and I have always loved walking through cemeteries and this one was extra beautiful.  It had actually had tombs with inscriptions of people who had signed the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence!  We’re talkin’ an old, old cemetery!

This grave caught my eye especially.  As soon as I saw it I thought, “Broken, beautiful heart.”

In the midst of all the graves and tombstones, there was a tree trunk from who knows how long ago.  I loved its gentle colors and swirls.

I especially loved this tombstone inscription:  ”A daughter in all things worthy of her parents.” Such a quaint, old fashioned, beautiful thing to say about a beloved daughter.

As we left the neighborhood, we crossed back over this wooden bridge . . .

. . .  which was surrounded by yet more beauty on all sides.

We pedaled away down picturesque streets back to our van parked along the
riverfront—eyes full of beauty, souls full of peace.

TEN YEARS AGO, on May 17, 2002, we heard the words, “Your daughter has cancer. She has a 15% chance of surviving five years.  It’s very, very bad.”

TEN MINUTES AGO,  I returned from taking my “probably won’t survive cancer”  daughter to High School, where she is earning straight A’s and doing great.  As I left the school parking lot, I wiped tears from my eyes as I thought about how very differently things could have turned out.

Driving home, I thought about a piece I had written for her Caringbridge site which looked at her cancer diagnosis from the vantage point of her five-year anniversary.  When I got home, I pulled it out and re-read it and I discovered how appropriate it was for the ten-year anniversary, as well.  In fact, you could take out every reference to five years and replace it with ten years, and the sentiments would be exactly the same.

And so here is that classic piece that celebrates the life of our beloved girl.  Whether it’s 2 years, or 5 years, or 10 years, the joy of the miracle of her life never changes.

FIVE YEARS AGO
A Cancer Diagnosis Retrospective
May 17, 2007 

Five years ago today our lives were shredded by four words, “Your daughter has cancer.” Our minds whirling and our hearts breaking, we could barely stand to peer five minutes into the future, let alone five years.

But here we are. Miraculously. Incredibly. Here we are.

Last night I stood at the kitchen window and watched my small survivor on the backyard swing set, legs pumping enthusiastically, hair swirling wildly, shining eyes fixed on the smiling sky above her.

I looked up at the sky then too, and whispered words of thanks that heaven hadn’t come to take her home. I whispered thanks that her home was still in my backyard, still in her pink bedroom, still in the walls that give her shelter and absorb the splashes of her spirit and her laughter.

Five years ago, Sarah was lying on a hospital bed in Winston Salem, NC, so terribly, terribly pale. Her hospital gown hung off of her thin body and her eyes were dull and rimmed with black circles. Her room was a medical grand central, playing host to an unceasing stream of somber-faced, serious-talking, big-word spewing medical professionals.

I watched them come and I watched them go.  I watched them take irreplaceable pieces of my daughter’s childhood with them as they left.

At six years old, she wasn’t even able to pronounce the name of the disease that had invaded her body. At six years old, she wasn’t able to understand that her world had just changed irrevocably and that horrendous physical and emotional pain would come to be a part of her life. When she was handed her cancer diagnosis, she was also handed a passport to a place where she was too young to be an adult but too old to be a child.

Five years ago, I felt tears rain down my face and slide into the macaroni and cheese the hospital had delivered to the room. Five years ago, I looked up into the eyes of my husband and saw fear and grief and anger and panic and love.

I followed the gurney carrying my weary daughter down to the scanning room where I heard that the cancer had completely taken over her small body; it was in her skeleton, her skull, everywhere, from top to bottom. I heard there was a tumor in her abdomen, and I heard that she was in the worst stage of the childhood cancer that has the worst survival rate of them all.

I listened to her cry when they injected the scanning dye and I laid my head near her head on the scanning table and joined my tears with hers.

I will never forget, in that dreary moment of despair, the compassion shown by the technician who was in the room with us. She laid aside her professional reserve and came and stood quietly behind me. She laid one hand gently on my shoulder and said the best thing possible—absolutely nothing. It was a tender and silent sharing of sorrow, a wordless bearing of grief.

Five years ago, all the scans and tests finally came to a merciful end and at 11 pm on her diagnosis day, we loaded our suitcases into the van and headed back home for a weekend respite before the start of treatment. I sat in the bench seat in the back of the van so that Sarah could stretch out and sleep on the way home. I will never forget the horror of that hour-long ride. As Sarah laid her head in my lap and fell into an exhausted slumber, I fought back waves of panic and claustrophobia, terror and grief.

The bright, big world I had awakened to that morning had, in a moment, crashed down all around me, crushing the very breath out of me, diluting the peace of my soul.

Five years ago, I sat in that van and stroked Sarah’s hair, watering it with my tears. I thought about the soon-to-come day when it would all fall out and there would be nothing to stroke but soft, sweet skin.

Five years ago, I saw no hope. Five years ago (plus a day), I stood in the Barbie aisle at K-Mart and cried, thinking of the day when there might no longer be a daughter to buy Barbies for. I went home and sat on the couch and silently watched Sarah sit on the floor and play with her toys. She was listless and tired and her heart wasn’t in her play. I think that deep down she felt the change in the air and she was reaching out with her little hands and heart, trying her best to capture the essence of the child she had been, trying her weary best to still be six years old and carefree, even with the sound of doctor’s voices ringing in her ears, even with her mom crying on the couch.

I have video of that day and when I watch it now, I am struck by the shadow of death that was already stealing across her pale face. I am struck by the horror that she was providing shelter to a merciless killer which even at the very moment I was taping, was insidiously creeping and growing and multiplying inside her precious body. And yet, regardless of all the ugliness that was going on inside her, the camera still caught the quiet glow of a spirit that was not ready to give up, that was not ready to give in. I saw in her eyes the smallest of sparks and my heart lifted at the sight.

And now. Now, here we are. Five years later.

Sarah has just gone off to school, talking, talking, always talking. Maybe she’s making up for those long days and months when she lay in a hospital bed too weak for words. But regardless of the reason for her garrulity, I welcome the sound of her sweet voice echoing through every room of the house, echoing through the garage as she’s climbing in the van, echoing through my mind even when she’s away from the house.

The sound of angels singing is in her voice.

She lay in bed beside me last night, both of us reading a book. Snowy (as usual) was wedged in between us, snoozing with a certain canine smugness that proclaimed, “Ahh. This is the good life.”

I looked past Snowy at Sarah and noticed the incredible pinkness of her cheeks, the lively sparkle of her eyes, the sweet roundness of her face. Clad in lavender, ruffly pajamas, with silken hair flung across the pillow, I suddenly saw in her a warrior who, against all odds, had once again found her childhood. And I was grateful.

Will she always be changed by cancer? Yes.

Is that a bad thing? Not really.

Her heart is softer, her appreciation of life is much more keen that it would have been otherwise.

Five years ago, one way of life was stripped away and another one took its place. But that’s okay, because the operative word here is life. A heart still pumps, a life still goes on.

In the world of Neuroblastoma where most of the children diagnosed are no longer alive five years later, life is indeed a sweet and wonderful thing.

Yes, things are different now. Yes, she has hearing loss, short-term memory damage, cognitive difficulties, immune system problems and hormonal challenges. Does it matter? Not today. Not five years after the day our world changed forever.

Today we put all our sorrow behind us and we put our joy up on a flag and wave it for all the world to see. Sarah is alive and, for the moment, tears are a distant memory.

Tonight, we will gather for supper and share the joy of five years of life that she almost didn’t get to have. We will gather and be grateful for prayer and medicine, for doctors, and for a medical technician who took the time to share our grief.

We will be thankful for swing sets and books in bed and loyal doggies and the banishing of the shadow of death from a face we all love so much.

We will be grateful for our Princess Groovy Chick, our angel, our Sarah, our survivor: five years later.

The second day of our Wild Anniversary Adventure (which is more exciting-sounding than 30th Anniversary Getaway) was spent in Edenton, NC, which has been voted the South’s Prettiest Town.

We got some sandwiches from a deli and took them down to the waterfront to eat and watch the birds.  Thankfully, we avoided being pooped upon by said birds because that would not have in any way enhanced our WAA Experience. (Well, except to have made it even more wild!)

While I snapped endless photos, Steve valiantly entertained himself by examining the ancient canons and other old memorabilia. He is a patient man, being married to a photo-snappin’ spouse.

After a while, it occurred to me that I could really stand to find a restroom so we went in the nearby Welcome Center to see if there was one available.  As soon as we walked into the quaint, history-laden building, I felt a stirring of an old phrase that I  haven’t heard in forever but just found appropriate for the moment.  I said to Steve, “I need to ask someone where the Necessary Room is.”

He said, “The what?  What in the world is a Necessary Room?”

I said, “It’s an old, genteel name that southerners used to call the restroom.”

He looked at me as though I were halfway down the road to crazy for making up such an obviously fictional name for a plain ol’ bathroom.   I persisted to his disbelieving demeantor, “But it really is a real name!”

And then we turned a corner and saw this.Ha.  I love it when I’m right.

After leaving the Necessary Room, we made our way back outdoors so that I could take yet more photos of yet more cool stuff.  This is the back porch of the Visitor Center.

Southerners can flat do some porches!

Our next Wild Anniversary Adventure Activity will consist of taking a nap.

Yep.  We’re pretty wild all right.

We left after church on Sunday (after commemorating Mother’s Day and Steve’s 55th birthday) and spent Sunday night at a Bed and Breakfast in Windsor, NC.  The inn dates back to 1790 and everywhere we looked, there was some fabulous antique or period piece or spot of loveliness to feast our eyes on.

The place even came equipped with its own Singing Cat.

This is what our breakfast table looked like Monday morning.

And this was our 3-course, gourmet breakfast, served by a large guy who looked like a bodyguard but had a dignified, resonant voice and placed our napkins in our laps, carefully arranged our settings of new silver (for each course) and gravely said, “Bon Appetit” as he put the food in front of us.

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a meal that was preceded by a body guard-uttered bon appetit before!

First course:  Melon balls accented with a skewer of grapes.

Second course: French toast with a caramelized crust, served with hot syrup and diagonally sliced bananas, sprinkled with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar.  I am a big fan of French toast and this was utterly exquisite.

Third course:   Crustless spinach quiche rounds, with slices of fresh tomatoes layered between.   The quiche was accompanied by rosemary sea salt bread, home-made jam, cherry tomatoes, and locally produced sausage.

Not only was the food fantastic, but the rooms were lovely.

Here is the front of the Inn.

Our beautiful room rug, Steve’s shoes, my feet.

Ahhhh . . . .

After our peaceful stay in Windsor, we have since moved to a small cottage on a large river in Edenton, NC where we will be through Wednesday. We are being extremely lazy on this trip which is rather fun since our usual days are of the extreme non-lazy variety.  In fact, writing this post is the most industrious thing I’ve done on the whole trip!  I’ve mostly taken a lot of naps, gazed at lovely things, eaten ice cream sandwiches–and been served breakfast by a bodyguard.

It’s all good.

Here is  the very cute Sir Smith on very first birthday.   Since then, he’s had 54 more.

To help celebrate Number-Fifty, I sent out a request to Steve’s parents, Sarah, Nathan and Meagan, asking if they would send me either a favorite memory of Steve, or else things they admire or appreciate about him. My goal was to reach fifty-five things. And we did it.

So let’s get this party started!

From Becky

1.  I appreciate that your antennae is always up to search out people who don’t quite fit in or feel comfortable; you always make a point of talking to them and making them feel valued.

2. No matter what job is confronting you (replacing burners in a grill, re-wiring a lighting fixture, fixing a toilet, installing a garage door opener, replacing a difficult part in the car) I can always count on you to say, “Well, how hard can it be?” And 99% of the time, you get the job done. Your handyman skills never cease to amaze me.

3. I love the fact that no matter what the numbers on my scale or the size tag of my jeans say, you always tell me that I am beautiful.

4. I like your strong hands.

5. You’re a funky bass player and look really cute when you play.

6. You have the ability to make anyone, anywhere, from any background, talk about themselves. You usually find their “conversation button” within the first 5-10 minutes because you are genuinely interested in people.

7. You are curious about everything and love to learn.

8. Even though you have embarrassed me (once or twice) out in public with your sanguine gregariousness, I am thankful that I married someone who keeps me from being too stodgy or stuffy.

9. You love our children well. I have seen you listen to them, pray with them, play with them, affirm them, guide them, correct them, and make them laugh. Bottom line is that they know beyond any doubt that they are loved by their dad.

10. You make the bed (whenever you get up after me) and you vacuum the house. BIG points scored there!

11. You loved me well through the cancer journey and looked at my changed body through eyes of love.  I’ll always remember this note waiting for me on the breakfast table shortly after my surgery when I was really down on myself.

12. You take care of yourself, eat healthy, dress well, look good, and smell good!

13. You always, always, always tell me that you’re proud of me and that you believe in me and in my gifts.

14. You love words and books. I could NEVER have married a man who had no interest in the Latin derivative of a word.

15.   You make me laugh.  (Very, very heartily.)

16.   You’re an excellent communicator.

17.   I love you because we make beautiful music–and beautiful kids–together.

From Sarah

I love you because of…

18. Your love for God.

19.  Your love for Mom.

20.  Your love for your family.

21. Your love of words.

22. Your love of music.

23. Your being a man’s man, but know when and how to be tender.

24. Your conviction of the need to make sure the grape juice lid is thoroughly screwed on despite there being no fizz to preserve.

25. Your lack of self-consciousness.

From Nathan

 26. Your randomness (“Shiny!”)

27. Your Biblical wisdom and ability to teach it.

28. Your ability to talk to strangers and make an impact on them even if you never see them again.

29.  Your ability to work with your hands on projects. Examples would be your knowledge of cars or sound equipment, or even music.

30. That you truly love mom and show that every day.

31. I admire your love of words and books.

32. I like that we enjoy the same types of man movies. (eg, Star Wars, Spiderman,  Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes,  Mission Impossible, etc. )

33.  I love the fact that you taught me to ski, but you let me beat you down the hill now.

From Meagan

34. You show love to your family in many different ways.

35. You are random and funny.

36. You are patient and a good teacher.

37. You have a true passion for your ministry and the people you minister to.

38.  You are a hard worker.

39.  You are giving.

40.  You are a good leader.

41. You are a great father-in-law!

From Ken and Vernie
(They opted to share some memories of Steve since they are in the enviable position of having known him the longest and having
the most memories.)

42. When Steve was 3 years old and still in his crib, he got a butter knife from the
kitchen drawer.  He loosened the screws on his bed making the railing wobbly.  His first attempt at the great escape!

43.  When Steve was about 7, he and a neighbor boy got hungry while the rest of our family was shopping.  They broke a dozen eggs looking for one that didn’t have a broken yolk and threw them one by one into the garbage.  They were still hungry when we got home.

44. When Steve was in college, he took apart an old Dodge truck and rebuilt it.  The truck was read and he named it “Elmo.”

45. His Grandpa Kiebler said he thought Steve was a smartest little boy he'd ever
known! (Grandpa's always know!)

46.  When he was ten, we lived in Hawaii and he had the lead role in “Cowboy on the Moon,”  a chapel choir play.  He asked (made us promise) we would not attend the production but (of course) we went anyway.  Later, after receiving a standing ovation, he never complained that we had attended (or that we’d told a little fib).

47.    He made a red and white woven hot pad for his Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Gwen which they are still using 45 years later.  (Actually he sold it to them!)

48.  He enjoys history and folklore

49.  He marched in Richard Nixon’s inauguration with the Clovis New Mexico High School marching band

50.   He won the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award as a senior at Clovis High School

51.   He played in a rock band called “The Plaids” while in college at UNCC.

52.  While his dad was on temporary duty in Italy, he and mom lived with her folks on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania.  For Christmas, he got a toy riding  tractor which he rode round and round in the kitchen.

53.  In Hawaii while his mom was driving, we rounded a corner with Steve and his brothers in the back seat of the 4- door Buick.  While the brothers were wresting, one of them accidently hit the door handle and the door flew open.  Steve rescued his brother by grabbing his leg as he was about to exit the moving car.

(Becky’s note:  Hmmmm.  Steve just told this story in a recent sermon and thought it was his DAD who grabbed his brother.  Guess he’s a hero and didn’t know it!)

54.  At age 14, he became an Eagle Scout while in Hawaii.  One merit badge included a 20- mile hike which he and his dad took around the western end of Oahu.

55.   Built model airplanes from an early age and continues to do so.

From this . . .

. . . . to this.

Happy fifty-fifth birthday from everyone who loves you!

Yesterday.

Bike ride.

Water and sky.

I love days that start with the water and sky.

I’m a person who loves to take people pictures. And people who take people pictures need people to take people pictures of!

Since Steve and Snowy don’t hold still long enough most of the time for people (and canine) pictures to be taken, Sarah is my Go To Gal. She is a good sport and keeps the eyerolls to a minimum, even when I drag out my camera for the umpteenth time of the day.

Plus, she’s not only cute . . .

. . .  she’s also beautiful.

Inside and out.

A week before Easter, we attended a special Easter performance at a local school auditorium.

Why was it so special?   Well, one for thing, it featured  a 70-voice choir and a 20-piece orchestra which is rather impressive for a small town.

But the other (even more important) reason it was special was because there were twelve different religious denominations represented in that group. Twelve!  

As I sat out in the audience and listened to talented people make roof-raising, heart-lifting music, I was so inspired to know the back story, to know that this wasn’t just one church making music for the community, but a whole bunch of people from a whole bunch of different religious backgrounds banding together to celebrate resurrection joy.  They were laying aside their differences and saying, “Let’s just concentrate on what we agree on and let’s join together and make some great music.”

What a novel idea!

Now let’s stay on the same subject, but rewind a couple of weeks:

As our own church started gearing up for our Easter production, we were trying to make a decision on who should play the part of Jesus.  After we had tossed around a few names one of our team members said, “Why don’t we ask Pastor Frank Lassen from Source Church to do it?”

A pastor? From another church?  Isn’t he our competition?  Why would we ask another church leader to come in to our church? What if he started stealing people from us? 

(That is a list of  things we did NOT say.)

Instead we said, “Let’s go for it!”  Our church slogan is “Building Bridges” and we thought this would be a great way to do that.

And so Pastor Frank was asked and Pastor Frank said yes.   And he did an amazing job.

During the process of rehearsals and drama prep, Steve said to me one day, “You know, Frank’s church is outgrowing their little store front building and they’re trying to raise money to buy property.  Why don’t we receive offerings on both of the nights of our drama and give all the money to his church?

Give money away?   Doesn’t our church need the money, too? Don’t we have drama expenses that need to covered? Why should we give money to the competition?

(A few more questions that we did not ask.)

We didn’t tell Pastor Frank or any of his church members who were attending the drama what we were going to do; we just did it.  And it blew them away.

I talked to Frank’s wife, Cindy, after the first night’s performance and she said, “When Steve got up and said the offering was going to go to our church, well, it just honestly took my breath away.   I was just absolutely shocked.   You guys will just never know how much this means to us.”

Over the space of the two performances, $3,000 was raised to help Source Church get started on a building fund.  Just recently, they asked Steve to stop by their church before our service started so that they could say thanks personally.

Now Pastor Steve Smith and Pastor Frank Lassen are very different guys, from vastly different backgrounds.   In fact, if you took a quick look at their churches, you would find all sorts of things that they don’t have in common, from their congregational demographics, to their buildings, to their music styles, to their preaching styles.  In fact, the affectionate joke around town is that you can’t go to Source Church unless you have a tattoo.  (And having a Harley would be a good thing too.)

But just like the community choir found things in common even though it was made up of twelve denominations, these two wildly differing churches found plenty of things in common too.

Here are a couple of shots from Steve’s visit to Source Church where he received a very sweet thank you from the congregation along with a gift certificate to one of our favorite local restaurants.

Can’t you just see the animosity . . .

. . . the competition

. . . and the discomfort between them?

I didn’t think so.

Over these past weeks since that Easter offering, we have heard dozens of people around the community comment on it.

But the best comment was one that Frank told us about.  He said that a friend of his who doesn’t attend church anywhere told him, “I’ve always thought churches and preachers were just in it for themselves and I’d never heard of one church giving money to another church before.  It really blew me away. I guess it looks as though I have one less thing to criticize churches about now.”

So. Do churches fight?  Do preachers compete and talk badly about each other and try to undermine each others’ work and ministry?

Sadly—sometimes.   But happily—not always.

Sometimes preachers (and churches) get it right.

And when they do, I think it makes God smile.

However, this morning I ran across a 5-minute video and two things happened:  1)  I was inspired beyond words 2) my excuses shriveled up right in front of my very eyes.

(My favorite part comes at minute 3:55. Just wow.)

click here
Never, Ever Give Up. Arthur’s Inspirational Transformation! – YouTube.

Since Steve and I work on weekends, we usually take Fridays off.  And since yesterday was Friday, we did a lot of day off-ish sorts of things together.

After I took Sarah to school, Steve and I rode 45 minutes to and from the north bridge.

And speaking of bicycles?  The following picture affords you a rare glimpse of The Bike-Riding, Green-Shirted, Helmet-Headed Preacher’s Wife of Manteo Species. Rumor has it that this particular creature often takes photographs of other people but is rarely in photographs herself.  And that is why you are being invited to take a moment to somberly appreciate this photo and its unique and accompanying rareness.

After our bike ride, we decided we should do something especially romantic and memorable and so we took our stuff to the recycling place.   (I know, I know. We live such exotically exciting lives.)

As you can see, I was a really big help to my husband in the recycling process.

I took important pictures. . .

. . . and I stopped to (literally) smell the roses.

Eventually though, Steve caught on to my sneaky tactic of Taking Pictures to Avoid Work and he put on his most husbandly tone to shout, “Tote that barge!  Lift that bale!”  (And also other lyrics from famous songs.)

And so I sighed loudly, put down my camera and picked up this box of incredibly dense and heavy cardboard weighing approximately 7,032 pounds.

Try not to be over-awed by the size of my biceps. even though I know that they are thrilling to behold. (Well, if you can see beyond the glare of my alarmingly pale skin, that is.)

Once we got to the recycling place, Steve burst into action and started unloading stuff and I burst into action and started taking pictures of him bursting into action unloading stuff.   (We make such a great team.)

When we got back home I spent a few minute sorting a box of books were given before going inside for a minute.

When I stepped back out, I was confronted with a truly horrific scene, namely, The Headless Husband!

Thankfully, Steve’s headless condition did not last for long because he recapitated himself forthwith.  (Big sigh of relief here.  There are few things worse than having to live with a headless husband.)

After I recovered from my fright, I watched him continue to do whatever mysterious work he does with all those little tool gadget widgety thingamadoodles.  (Can you tell that I take great pride in choosing exactly the right words for my blog entries?)

I would tell you a lot more details about the rest of the day but I doubt that you could stand the excitement of trips to the car parts place, running errands, taking Sarah to work, grilling fish for dinner and watching the Iron Lady on DVD.

But it occurs to me as I look back over that quietly non-remarkable day, that the richness of life isn’t made up of Big Event Days, although those may be the ones we tend to remember the most vividly.

Instead I think that life’s richness is added to by bit by bit—by the beautifully ordinary days that don’t take up much space in our memories but still manage to fill up all the places of our hearts.