Sunday: Monday is our HUGE LIFE-CHANGING DAY!

We just finished having the greatest weekend imaginable. Bill's daughter/my stepdaughter came Friday night and stayed with us till this afternoon.

Emma was an absolute joy. She is so FUNNY, and SO beautiful, and has a calm spirit, and she and her dad and me (I tried to judge how much time to give them alone and how much time to join in) had the most relaxing weekend, with a lot of sitting outside in white Adirondack chairs in my crazy Dr. Seuss garden (bizarre flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds going in every direction) just talking.

Last night, we went to dinner at the 5-star restaurant in town (Jimmy Crippens' for my North Miami friends who knew Jimmy there), and it was SO GOOD. Then we came home and sat under the stars and the three-quarter moon till way past dark, surrounded by crickets, while Emma gave us the most magical trip back through her childhood in our family, telling us every great memory she thought of, and reminding us of the fun, funny, crazy and silly things we did as a family.

As Emma talked, Bill and I went into a state of transcendent bliss. As parents, there is nothing you want more than to know that your parenting "took" and that the decades of effort you gave to creating an enchanting childhood for your little ones are recalled as delightful to the children you did it for.

Neither of us expected such an evening. We are still going over and over everything she said, as she's now driving back to Richmond, and we are both finding little tears of joy falling at the gift this child gave to us last night.

As you can imagine, Bill is feeling that his whole life has been validated, his whole career, his every labor, by having helped to raise this beautiful, loving, wise, intelligent, compassionate human being who loves us as much as we love her.

I'm not sure we've ever had such an incandescent experience in our lives as last night.

She wasn't even trying to "make us feel" anything. She was just reminiscing, and we were given the gift of sitting under those stars together, the three of us, while she did this, letting Bill hear his whole history as a father going past on Emma's words, like cricket songs passing through the garden on a little choo-choo train track, each train car being one more story connected to one more story, to one more story, all from our family history, remembered for us by Emma.

Did she know what she was doing? Did she know she just fulfilled her father's entire life last night? Maybe. Or does love have a way of finding the exact little train track it needs to find, through the exact garden, on the exact starry night, at the exact moment in time?

But on to less luminous adventures: Tomorrow we leave early for Winston Salem, and by 2:30 (or 4 if the doctor is late), we will know what is inside Bill's torso. They aren't testing anything but shoulders down to pelvis. I wish he could have a tip to toe scan, but maybe it's a Medicare cutback.

And no matter what the scan shows*[see note below], he starts 12 weeks of chemo three days later, taking us into November. We will probably be more assertive in getting the doctor to give us a "how much time" prognosis tomorrow, even if Bill chooses to step out of the room. I have to have FACTS to go through this MY way, and I will fight for them if I have to.

Plus, if Bill is tumor-free, then that's a new remission. If he's not, well, maybe the next chemo (all new stuff) will knock back any tumor.

Tomorrow's scan results will go up the SECOND we get home (7 or so). I don't have a phone with which I can post from the car. If POSSIBLE, I will open my computer briefly at Wake Forest after we get the results, after 2:30 or so, and I could post a blog entry of a sentence before we start the drive home. We'll see. If we're stunned with bad news, we might even spend the night in Winston and drive home Tuesday when we're not both in mortal shock. We just don't know what to expect. Either way, a blog will appear by Monday night.

*[Here's the ending note: There is a configuration of facts that would cause Bill to stop the chemo and enjoy the time he has, with nights like Emma gave us last night, via Hospice at home and the famous Hospice no-pain cocktails. We'll let you know, of course.]

THANK YOU FOR EVERY TINY THOUGHT AND PRAYER. YOU ARE IN OUR HEARTS CONSTANTLY.

And thank you, Emma, more than you could possibly understand.