Anniversary Surprise

The last few weeks won’t go down in anyone’s books as the best ever. We had a scare that my mom’s cancer had spread into her bones, but it looks like that’s not the case and so we’ll be moving forward with a type of targeted chemotherapy. My mom called me to let me know she’d made an appointment of Sept. 24 for the procedure, which requires 1-2 nights of hospitalization (depending on how she reacts to everything). I, in turn, let Mike know. And Mike replied asking if she could put it off by a day or two.

I was floored. What a rude, insensitive thing to ask! She has been dragging her feet about having any treatment and she goes ahead and does it and he asks if we can move it? For what? I looked at the calendar and he was set to be out of town, but I didn’t see what that had to do with the procedure.

“You’ll be out of town with me” he said.

“Huh?”

“It’s kind of a surprise. Do you want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“YEAH.”

Well, as it turns out, Mike has been planning since July a trip for our 10th wedding anniversary. He worked with my secretary and my boss and his secretary to block three days on my calendar. He’s flying his mom and stepdad in to watch Michaela and he’s taking me to Mexico City for a five-day getaway.

I sat at my desk and cried as he told me all that. I feel like basically since the end of July, I’ve been triaging my life, just dealing with whatever was most important at that moment or on that day and letting everything else slide, including (especially) taking care of myself. So for him to have planned this trip — a trip to a place I love, that I’ve been telling him for 10 years I want to take him to, to show him where I lived and went to school — it was just so thoughtful and sweet.

And while I’d do anything for my mom, thinking we wouldn’t be able to go was a giant bummer, to say the least.

I told Mike I’d talk to my mom to see if she could move it by a day. When I called her, she said the scheduler had given her the option of Sept. 24 or sometime in October, so obviously we can’t move the appointment.

I was just about to call Mike back to tell him to cancel the plans, or to see if we could come home a day early, or I don’t know what, when he called me back to say he’d gotten the dates wrong and that we come back on Sept. 23, not the 24th, so nothing has to change at all: we can go on our trip and I can be here for my mom’s procedure!

I have spent the days since then floating on air, dreaming about our trip. I have to get through two days of work and then we’ll be off to CDMX, as people call it these days. I can’t wait!