Home is

We are so thrilled to be home.
To sleep in our own bed. To be surrounded by our comforts. Our stuff of life.The scenery out our windows. Our furry creatures. Each a part of what makes home home.

Home is an interesting concept. I wrote before, home is where Dominic and I are together. (And where I have ziplock bags.) And yes, that is true. But home is also that place where you have everything just so. We each have a bedside lamp at home. We each have a place to rest our coffee in the morning and our water at night. We have a place for books and remotes and tech and the various bottles of prescriptions or sleep aids or painkillers.
Here is that place at our temporary home.

The wonder of the box. Cats sit in them. I lie next to them. I brought my own lamp. A sticker marked fragile is wrapped around the corner. Indeed. So true. Glamorous living.

We're working toward normalcy. It will take time. We know that. We talk about it. The fatigue is still a very real thing for Dom. The steroids did mask the fatigue, so now he rides the tide in and out, day by day. He's still neutropenic, which means we're still careful about the foods he eats. We have to think through things, being sure to eat safely while keeping in mind magnesium and potassium rich foods. Can I get an amen for dark chocolate? Rich in magnesium. Who knew?

I feel like I'm looking over my shoulder. I don't feel like something bad is going to happen. (It already did?) It's just after all this time of hospital stays and infusion center visits, it's a strange thing to be home and not anticipating a 5 day or 3 month stay. I can't shake it.
I know I will.

Over time.

There's so much to do at home also. There was much to do before that terrible day back in June. I've spent the last several days cutting back trees and pulling weeds. The neighbor goats are delighted with branch after branch of new oak cuttings. I have been resistant to cutting back the many saplings around our house, but last year's devastating fire changed my mind about that. There is a young oak tree just outside our bedroom window on the other side of the fence separating us from the former horse field. As I came up to the tree, I noticed a shrub below had burned and the flames reached up and burned a section of the tree. My gratefulness for all the people who saved our home bubbled up again. The acknowledgement of how precarious this past year has been washed over me as it does periodically, sometimes with rhyme and reason, sometimes with none. I have exponentially experienced the fragility of life this past year, and it causes me to simultaneously hold on tighter and relax my grip.

I do believe the transition has been complicated by this experience of the fires. The final months leading up to transplant day were colored by waiting and hoping for rain, and feeling so incredibly vulnerable.

I'll likely always feel vulnerable. I'll also always feel grateful and strong and capable and cared for. Life is complicated. This past year just added some incredible facets to the prism I see the world through.

And so now, we're settling into yet another temporary rhythm. A rhythm of first 3 days in one week to the infusion center, then 2 days, and hopefully soon just one and then none. The week of 3 visits tore me up. We've had our longest vacation this weekend. We've normally been  driving to Sacramento every Monday and Thursday, but this week, we don't return until Tuesday. I had four days in a row to settle. Four days that afforded me the time to work on the great outdoors and catch up on office work and watch some movies with Dom.

There's still bouts of discomfort for him. Constant little reminders of all he's been through, and all that lies ahead. We constantly hope and pray that he'll have little after effects, but it's all still a mystery how things will shake out.


We haven't been very sociable. We're still keeping pretty much to ourselves until his WBC goes up. My neighbor dropped something by while I was taking a walk last night, and I was kind of excessively sad I missed her. I almost called her back. I'm mostly an introvert, and a home body, but this has been a long haul. I could very possibly find myself enjoying small talk at this juncture.

I think it will all feel a little less transitory when summer comes. I love the winter. I love bundling up and snuggling under blankets. But I'm hoping by summer, Dominic will have his WBC back on track. I'm hoping he'll have more energy to be out and about. I'm hoping his windows of experience open wider. I think home is not just where we have our comforts but also where we feel safe to thrive. I think I'll feel more at home when Dominic can return to his camera and his rhythms of life.

We're astonished we're already here, we've already come this far. We can continue to make the slow transition and learn to thrive again.

Now, off to bed for his big day tomorrow! No more tri-fusion! No more ports in his body! A long shower without worry about getting the bandages wet is on the list of things to do tomorrow. For the first time in months, no Saran Wrap and tape. (Yep. He was like leftover veg, wrapped in kitchen plastic roll.) Tomorrow is yet another milestone of so many.

Forever grateful.

jiggity jig

The news is out. We are home! We are officially home. After one hundred plus days, the temporary home story is over and the transition to home sweet home begins.

I wish I had taken the time to sit and write so many thoughts...but it has been a whirlwind!

We began the transition back in February. We talked about what to do as our commitment to the house in Sacramento was coming to an end and the neighbor's ability to not tromp across the floors at 3 am was not coming to an end.

We made arrangements for friends to be with Dom while I spent a weekend getting our little cottage ready. I'd let the cats have free reign in our bedroom and after 3 months of their indoor/outdoor fur-bodies lounging on the bed, it was not pretty. Everything came off the bed and got a good wash. And, call me crazy, but I started spring cleaning from one corner of the room, all the way through the house. No, I'm not content to just vacuum, dust, and mop. I must go through every drawer and basket and cupboard and spring clean.

But I have to back up. You see, I was not the first person around here to spring clean. The tractor shed is attached to our home, and over the years, the shed became the final resting place for a lot of junk. (The homeowner's, not mine! I have plenty of junk myself, but perhaps not a garage door motor circa 1970.) Over the months we'd been gone, some special people had been weeding and cutting back bushes. And one day, a group of very special people spent love day cleaning out this space! No small feat. I parked, ready to tackle everything all at once, in the back of my mind knowing I would also tackle this space soon and.....it was already tackled! It was cleaned out! And, as I got closer to our porch, I saw pretty flowers fresh planted! My heart was swelling and racing. I felt so very loved.
It was like an Easter egg hunt, that's what I thought, as I walked around the house and found once empty flower pots and ceramics filled lovingly with flowers and succulents. And a young man had spent his day weed mowing until he ran out of string. I was so touched that the son of a friend would spend his day caring for us so tangibly. Our firewood was stacked neatly, and as I have stacked firewood myself, I know that was no small job. Everything looked so incredible. Our dear friends did what would take me weeks to do in one day. I still get a little verklempt thinking about it.

And they are dreaming of outdoor spaces with us. Dreaming of a summer spent outside in beauty, quite the opposite of this past summer. And I could not have better people in my life if I tried. I attribute it to Dom and his winning personality.

So, armed with all those good feelings, I set into the house. I covered the table in items that would be happier in other homes. I packed the last of Christmas away. I of course cuddled the kitties. And I vacillated between can this really be happening and we are coming home soon.

I spent the first day and a half doing the purge thing. There was an added layer of looking to replace things my Mom had lost in the fire and finding things I was so relieved were not lost. My heart still hurts when I think about the fire. It's crazy to me to think back to where we were that October. Dom was on round 6, the dreaded even round of chemo, and we still had not found a donor. There were possibilities, but no one clearly committed. I think we were as low as could be. And waking up to the terrible news that our city was on fire, our home was under threat, a beloved home lost already, and Dom not able to lift his head off the pillow, those were dark days. Those days, it was very difficult to imagine that someone would donate their stem cells and we'd find a place to live in Sacramento, and we'd make it through the 100 days.

And there I was. Preparing our nest that survived the fire, for my man who also survived his own fire. 100 days nearly complete and pretty little flowers to welcome us home.

And wouldn't you know, if I wasn't already emotional enough, my Aunt was doing some spring cleaning and purging of her own, and offered to send me some of my Grandma's things she'd been keeping. In figure, I am a carbon copy of her. My aunt sent me a couple pictures to see if I'd like the items or not. The black rain coat that was my Grandma's last coat I remember her wearing immediately brought tears to my eyes. There was just something about the cuffs that instead of buttons had little bows. The coat spoke to me also of the adventures my Grandma went on. She wore this coat to Switzerland and Chicago. She'd traveled Europe straight out of high school in 1938. Her steamer trunk with stickers from each country she visited sits in my house complete with much of her travel attire. She continued to travel as she could throughout her life. Somehow, that coat held so much Grandma, whom I love dearly. I'd already shared all this with my Mom, shared with her how I cried when the photo came, and cried again even as I shared this with her. I cried as I opened the box of treasures cleaning weekend, and shortly thereafter, Mom showed up. The coat fit her perfectly. It's raining even as I share this, and it makes me so happy that my Mom should have my Grandma's coat. (This Grandma is my Dad's mother.) But for my mom to have her coat just felt right in the midst of all that has happened.

And all of the above is to say, if you didn't already guess, this is an emotional time! But, I welcome the emotion. I welcome the connections and the history and the memories and the dreaming of better days and making new memories.

I scurried around for 2 nights and 3 days and with the help of Mom and friends, got it done. I feathered the nest and returned to Sacramento to scoop up Dominic. He'd had a great weekend with friends.

I packed up our little mini to the roof. (We'd arranged to pick up the rest, which also turned out to be to the roof, on our next doctor visit.) Dom stayed in the car as the first thing I packed up is his work computer. Once I could not shove a single other thing inside, we set off for home. I wondered how he'd feel heading home after 3 months of being away. We were mostly excited and relieved to be saying goodbye to the noisy house. No more elephants up stairs. No more metal kitchen with 20 pound flat ware clanging loudly every time we ate. And we were so longing for home. And, we were nervous as we weren't technically freed to go home. We just decided it was time. But, a part of us worried as we didn't want to jeopardize anything we'd worked so hard for.

Dom felt the same shock and awe I did as he walked up the path and saw all the work that had been done. He looked up at our green hills that were once brown from the fires. He scanned the tree line taking in the ones that burned down, and the ones that look like they'll make a comeback. He masked up and took a walk.

And now that we're "officially" home, the sweet relief can really settle in. Now that the doctor said it's "okay", we are sleeping like babies. He is extra fatigued right now, as the steroids he'd been on gave him energy. He's completely off steroids now, and the doctor cut out another medication yesterday. Each cut is a sign of moving forward. So, he's settling in slowly. I'd imagine it's bitter sweet to be home. Mostly sweet. But there's still limitations. We're still taking precautions as his White Blood Count is taking its sweet time rallying. It will be some time before he can integrate back in to work, and even more time before he can work in the garden or do things he'd normally do around here. But for now, he can wander around outside. He can set up his office and be inspired by tutorials and past images he's shot.

And I've already gotten my fingers in the soil. My neighbor took me on a surprise adventure and bought me a plant to put in the ground with all the fixings. She'd done some research and took me to just the spot for what was needed. We spent the next morning weeding out a spot that was once a jumble of pots, and carved out a plot for sweet peas and peonies.

Looking back, time did fly and move like molasses. I did not know what to expect, but I think things went better than expected. I bought Dominic a bell for Christmas, thinking he'd be an invalid barely able to move, and that was certainly not the case. He's been so strong, and has received so many compliments from the doctor and nurses for what a good patient he has been.

We still have many trips to Sacramento. There's still many tests and blood draws. But we're home! And the first tests returned very good results. Dom has just returned from a morning walk and our noisy black kitty is telling us what's what.