Joan’s father brought her to the clinic today so John would not miss another day of work. On her insistence, her dad has gone to find a bowl of soup in the cafeteria for her. If they don’t have broccoli cheese—and she knows the cafeteria will not—she has instructed him where a nearby café that makes it is located. She has sent her father on a scavenger hunt of sorts because he is never able to hide his concern, and Joan knows it is best if she receives the chemo alone. As the cancer killer drips through the IV, Joan whispers again, “Today’s the day. I may not see it, but God is at work.” Her mind wanders ahead to Halloween, and she wonders if she’ll be up for walking Gigi and Christopher around the neighborhood. Her mom found a lion costume a couple of months ago at a sale for Christopher, complete with a golden, bushy mane to frame his face. Gigi has said she wants to be Big Bird from Sesame Street, but Joan questions whether she can make the costume. She closes her eyes to rest and seems to be drifting toward sleep when she hears “Today’s the day. God is working. I just know it.”
Joan flashes her eyes open and looks at the mother and her son, but they aren’t in conversation. The young man’s eyes are closed, and the mother is reading. “Did you say something?” Joan asks, keeping her voice low.
The woman, who looks to be in her late forties, with short blond hair and a stout figure, turns to see Joan. “I’m so sorry,” she says, whispering. “I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”
Joan lifts her head from the back of the chair, wanting to come out of it altogether. “What did you say?” Her voice is earnest, almost pleading.
The woman looks at her son and gets up from her chair, stepping gingerly to Joan and whispers, “I said, today’s the day.”
“You did say it!” Joan puts a hand to her head and looks at the chair next to her. “Could you sit down?” The woman does and Joan gropes for words. “Why did you say that?”
The woman shrugs, her eyes lighting up as she talks. “Bruce was diagnosed with cancer two months ago. For some reason, on the day he was diagnosed, I said, ‘Today’s the day. God is working.’”
Joan looks at her, puzzled. “What did you mean by that?”
“I knew that we could be scared to death and start wringing our hands or we could pound our stake firmly into the ground and believe that God is at work, not tomorrow or the next day, but today, right now.”
Joan feels tears begin to swell and she shakes her head to keep them from falling. “My husband has been saying those same words to me.” The woman’s eyes open wide as she listens. “And now you. The same words! Isn’t that strange?”
The woman smiles. “Do you think it’s coincidence?”
Joan looks into the woman’s blue eyes; they aren’t condescending but are full of kindness. “Part of me thinks that it is, but another part wonders.”
“Wonders what?”
Joan looks up at the ceiling and back at the woman. “If God is trying to get my attention? I thought that if He did that it’d be something bigger like a meteor shower, not something like a sentence my husband is saying. Or the word ‘wind’ in a recipe!” The woman looks confused. “You had to be there.” The woman laughs, understanding exactly what Joan is saying. “I’m not much of a believer.” Joan stops, clarifying. “I mean, I believe in God, that’s pretty much where it ends.”
The woman puts her hand on Joan’s arm. “Belief has to start somewhere. Your beginning is cancer. My beginning was my college fiancé dumping me our senior year. One of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Joan’s eyes fill with fear and she fights the urge to cry. “How can cancer be the best thing? What if…”
The woman nods, looking at her son. “I’ve gone through all the what-ifs. I know what could happen. My husband and I have talked about all of them. But what if the what-ifs don’t happen?” Her eyes are sincere as she looks at Joan. “What if there is something greater than all of our what-ifs? What if God heals Bruce? What if He heals you? What if today is the day?”
The woman smiles and Joan feels tears in her eyes again. What if?
October 2012
Gloria, Miriam, and Lauren carry sections of a baby crib up the stairs and into the first bedroom on the right. Travis and Andrea follow, carrying a small white chest of drawers. Gloria spotted the crib, complete with mattress, pads, sheets, and chest of drawers at a garage sale and called Lauren right away. She insisted that she and Marshall buy the items for the baby’s room. “You’re going to have a baby shower anyway, so consider these your first and probably best gifts!” Gloria said.
Travis works at putting the crib together as the women place the chest of drawers against the wall, next to the door. Miriam looks around the small room. “You’re going to need a chair or rocking chair of some sort there in the corner.”
Lauren looks at the empty space. “You think?”
“If you breast-feed in the middle of the night,” Andrea says, “a chair is nice in the baby’s room.” She looks around the room. “I remember Bill and I doing this like it was yesterday.”
“Me, too,” Gloria says. “The days were long, but the years were short.” Miriam and Andrea nod in agreement, smiling at Lauren.
“That just means there will be days that will feel like they’ll never end, but they do,” Andrea says. “And it feels like the years fly by, and they do.”
“Oh, to be a young mother again,” Miriam says, pulling the crib sheets from the bag to be washed.
“Would you do it again, Miriam?” Lauren asks.
“She’s too old to do it again,” Gloria says.
“Says Grandma Moses,” Miriam replies. “I’d do some things differently, and I can leave all those things in the hands of you and Travis, to do right what I got wrong.”
“We’re just thrilled to be grandmas again,” Gloria says.
“She will be Grandma,” Miriam says. “I will be Noni M.”
Gloria scoffs. “How is it that even your grandma name annoys me?”
Lauren waves her hand at them to stop and positions Andrea next to them, in the middle of the room. “Say cheese,” she says, holding up her phone to take a picture.
“Noni M!” Gloria says, making all of them laugh. She claps her hands together and says, “There are some miscellaneous pictures for the wall and a few baby toys I found at the sale in my car.”
“Gloria, you didn’t say—” Lauren begins.
“I couldn’t resist,” Gloria says. “They were inexpensive and cute and if you don’t want them, there are plenty of parents at Glory’s Place who can use them.” Miriam and Andrea go with her to the car as Travis’s cell phone rings. He notices it is Robert Layton’s number.
“Hi, Robert!”
“Please tell Lauren that farmer Bud lives thirty miles from here.”
Travis looks at Lauren and smiles.
TWENTY
October 1972
John uses a table saw to cut a new table leg to replace the one he miscut a couple of weeks ago. Although he has moved his finish date, at this rate, he worries that he will not have the table completed for Christmas. Fear pushes against his heart, and he wonders if Joan will be here at Christmas. He presses his fingers into his eyes in an effort to drive away the thought. “Today’s the day,” he says, his voice catching. Joan is getting thinner, and fatigue grips her many more times a day. “You’re doing things I can’t see,” he whispers. He finishes the cut and stops the saw, putting his head down, too tired or too distracted to continue. “You’re doing things I can’t see,” he whispers again, his lip beginning to quiver. He grips the workbench. “I believe.” He closes his eyes against the tears. “But there’s part of me that doesn’t. Help me believe.”