Sounds ridiculously cheesy I know.  Sometimes the bad things are just crap.  And some days just stink.  But, not most of them.  Really, if I think about it- just a few days now and then really stink.  The rest of them seem to hold within them some lesson, some joy, some laugh, some memory – something that makes my spirit richer than it was before.

Don’t ever delude yourself into thinking things are perfect here.  That would be a lie.  We have our whiny, cranky, in each other’s way kind of days.  But that’s not most of them.

Lots of rotten things happen to everyone.  But lots of good things happen too.

Lots of rotten things happen when you have Cowden’s Syndrome. Sometimes the key lies in looking at things from a different perspective.

Every moment.  Every meeting.  Every diagnosis.  Every doctor’s appointment.  Every report read.  Every bill fought for.  Every new teacher.  Every new friend.  Every old friendship renewed.  Every miracle.  Every ordinary moment.  They all bring us to where we are.

Maybe I have watched too much sci-fi with my husband, but to change any one thing, any event in our lives, could alter the course of our lives.

I won’t spend time wishing things away- certainly not the good, and definitely not the bad.

Sometimes the lessons hurt.  Sometimes they make us cry.  Sometimes, like when we say goodbye to dancing school, and all its emotional joy, coupled with insufferable physical pain, we get a little sad.

Then we say, if it wasn’t for dance, we wouldn’t have learned love of the stage.  If it weren’t for dance we wouldn’t have seen a growth in confidence, and an ability to manage a growing young body.  Losing dance is hard…

But if there wasn’t Cowden’s, and chronic pain, and an inability to deal with impact – would there be swimming?

Private lessons at a local college start Saturday.  Regular practice begins the next month.  She salivates when she gets near a pool.  She just wants to get better and better.

New sport, new school, new friends, and old ones too.  Same old pain.  Same nasty viruses.  Some things change, and some remain the same.

Sometimes I wish (quietly to myself) that life could be a little bit easier.  Then I look at my daughter, and my husband, and my dogs, and my house, and I think – things are just fine right here.

We have each other – for the ups and downs- for the ins and outs.

They say if everyone had a few moments with everyone else’s problems, they would fight to grab their own back.

We are getting by.  We are “beating cowden’s”

The grass is green enough right here.