How do you live out what you know? And how do you live out what you know when what you know is pain?
Chase has felt many needles. Needles for chemo, needles for blood draws, needles to keep him hydrated and pass life-saving medicines into his veins. So many times, his skin has been pricked and prodded – his hands, arms, chest, and even the heels of his feet. If you look closely, you can still see many of the scars.
And somehow, somewhere along the way, needles became synonymous with band-aids. This kid has accessorized with band-aids, played with band-aids, covered his arms with them in the hospital play room (which scared the living daylights out of his doctors who thought each of the ten band-aids up his arm were genuine) and competed against siblings for who has the most (spoiler alert: it was almost always Chase).
Band-aids have been a part of his life and a sign of his pain, and yet, this last week when his kindergarten class celebrated their “100th Day” of classes, Chase wanted to cover his “100 poster” with band-aids.
So, we sat at the kitchen table and covered a poster board in the little brown pieces of adhesive and we talked. We talked about gauze and flushes and old stories where he had screamed and been afraid. Sometimes just being around the familiar supplies is enough to trigger the memories. And then, just at the moment it all felt a little sad again, we decided to look at the things we were most thankful for in those memories. And you know what? There were quite a lot of things for which to be thankful.
These band-aids started as a picture of hardship and ended up on a poster full of memories. I can’t help but wonder if the moment pain crosses into beauty is the moment it forces us to be thankful.
And as he painstakingly wrote out “Chase 100” on the top of his poster, he paused for just a second to consider, and then added an exclamation point. As he finished, he turned to me and explained: “Chase. 100. Exclamation point, Mom. Do you know why?” He ran on before I could have answered if I’d wanted to. “It’s because this is happy. You put an exclamation point” his lips curled extra hard to form those words; “when things are happy.”
So there you have it . . . Lessons drawn from a band-aid, a poster, and a little boy who has been so brave.
Moment by moment.
