Three Months Since...

The date looms on my calendar.

More explanation below, but for now suffice it to say...last month I decided to head to the Black Hills for a few days. Before something. I craved those hills, really. Perhaps it was restless escape, I don't know, but I went...driving across I-90, the great plains of the Dakotas. A happy sigh squeaked out with each passing mile, as I neared her beauty. My home.

When a little girl, I wandered through birch trees in these hills - high enough to be mountains except in official name. Leaves stirred in the wind, whispers of sparkles and confetti and purple tutus and all things magic. My body was one with these woods, skis on water and snow, hands skimming grass as I walked on young and strong and sure legs.

Rocks and pine cones, treasures placed on my window sill...

...then I grew up, as we are prone to do, and I left my friend, Alice, and those hills I called Wonderland.

Until I was knocked off my feet, unable to move out in the world for awhile...

...and Alice began to peek around the corner, spied me on the sofa. Sick and tired from chemo. She led me down a sterile white hallway in the hospital toward the radiation bed. For five weeks straight, she didn't miss a day. She stood beside a nurse before my surgery, winking that all would be well, as scary procedures and tests were explained to me.

Well Alice was there when I woke, feet out of bed and back topside again. Except it wasn't to the plain old grey adult world..I walked into a technicolor place, where moments were sweeter, assumptions no longer. Moments mattered, really mattered and counted, day by day by day. On a wing and a prayer. And Alice encouraged, Every adventure requires a first step.

And she held out a pen:

Write your story, Julie, speak your dreams. Your words create worlds upon worlds, do not forget again. Build your castle on this bog, there is no better time, no perfect time, no perfect place.

So I began to pick through my thoughts. To keep the best, the pure, the true and right. The hopeful. Yes, the hopeful became treasures, as I learned to discard sad and tragic ones, or pay them less heed. The dour, sour and morose predictions of All Things Gloomy gradually lost their pull, or at least smothered me less often. And I bowed to the possible, the gorgeous, the promise of Something Good.

And now with Alice on my shoulder...I visit the place that I don't want to go. The one alternately inconvenient and just plain awful, depending on the moment, my state of mind. So I tell a story for hours and days leading to my preventive medical scans. The ones that peek into my body, spying what used to be wholly mine. Because now others wish to see inside, to assure themselves and me.

Every 90 days. Tick tock, second by second, as the Cheshire Cat reminds that the proper order of things is often a mystery.

So time before these scans drags and flies then drags to flight, and Alice watches as I change from hope to fear to hope again - with hope the always goal. And my stubborn story goes like this...

...I live for many years on this planet, with my beloved people. To tame fear, to listen more, to cheer myself and others. To watch seasons turn, spinning one into another, with Christmas trees and Easter bunnies, laughter, flowers and...

...finally the day comes, of course it does. It is the way these things go, I have learned it well. The hour arrives when I am called to return to the the clinic that stitched me back together but makes me shake now.

And I say...no never again, never again.

But return I must, for only one morning. Just one, I assure myself, a whisper of prayer in my car.

Then there is the walk to a waiting room where people, sick and broken, straddle between what is and what will be...kept from the world where there is motion and errands and assumptions with smug sureness for tomorrow.

After my scan, I wait a day. And my heart speaks my story over and over and over, on repeat. A chant, a shout, a demand, an incantation from me to the heavens for all things blessed.

The hour comes when my doctor, the surest and best of allies, comes on for our video visit.

In the space between his appearance and first words, I lightning fast remember what I have done with the three months since our last visit. And in the next second I push ahead to name what I will do with my next three months.

List those plans, write those dreams, speak them too. Make them real...

...but life is a gift not a guarantee, right? An unpredictable roller coaster fantasy, dips and turns and sharp angles.

Alice nods her head then, encouraging me to stay awake as the doctor says once again, You are healthy and well, Julie.

My throat cinches a little, as a sob rests there. The mightiness of the present and the gift overwhelms for a moment.

And then the question waits for an answer, as my doctor inquires: How is your book coming, Julie?

So I ask you, my friends: How is your story coming? What do you say to yourself, day after day?

For whether our dreams come true...we are powerful with the courage to name our deepest desires. Trusting that no matter, no matter, no matter...all is well and good, in The End.

And as Alice whispered of all things possible, and beginning to believe them so...I stood by this lake and readied to account for my gift of time, one more visit and nine years more.