Mother’s Day 2007 was one of those weird, do-we-celebrate-or-don’t-we? days. I was due with Kostyn about two weeks later, so not technically a mom in the sense that I had no baby in my arms. But with a bulging belly and many a sleepless, prayerful night behind me, I already felt like a mom. I knew I was one, yet that Sunday morning when our pastor asked for all the moms in the sanctuary to stand and be recognized, I kept my seat. Chris glanced at me, but I shook my head. “I’m not yet” I whispered.
I still feel sad when I think about such sheepish denial of something my heart told me was already true. The fact is, I knew I was a mom but I was worried the other moms around me wouldn’t think I was mom enough.
It starts that early for us moms.
The following year when I stood up in church and accepted my pink carnation with the other mothers, young and old, it felt like an initiation into a private club. I was proud and happy and blushing, finally in, legitimately, with my almost-1-year-old in my arms as wiggly proof.
Today, four years and another son later, as I stood at the front of a different sanctuary in a different state being recognized as a mom and volunteer in our church’s nursery, it felt like more than being part of a club. It felt like being part of a force. There we were, lined up across the front of the church representing multiple generations and backgrounds and parenting styles. Some who became mothers barely out of high school; others who started a family much later in life. Moms who’d lost children, and moms who had grandchildren. Moms who spank, or don’t; homeschool, or don’t; work, or don’t; breastfeed, or don’t. The list of differences between us is endless, and pointless, overridden by one unifying similarity – motherhood.
For the last three years my blog on this day has been dedicated to my own mother, a loving thank-you note for all the things she did for me, acts large and small I’d realized that year as caring for my own kids gives me a deepening perspective on her role in my life. But on Friday she left a voicemail message that shifted my focus, and made me smile. “I know you usually write something for me for Mother’s Day, and I love it,” she said. “But I think there’s another mother in your life that maybe deserves to be recognized too. I just wanted to say that maybe this year you could write something about her? Anyway, just a thought. I love you.”
It’s just like a mom, isn’t it, to put someone else first. She was referring to my amazing mother-in-law – through the blessings of marriage I now have two mothers, not just one. But her message made me think of motherhood on an even grander scale. I don’t just have two moms in my life; I have dozens. Some are sisters, some are friends, some I know only through the wonders of the Web. I look to them individually to guide me, teach me, support me, commiserate with me and laugh with (sometimes at) me. Together we are a force, changing the lives of our kids with every hug and every limit and every lesson and, in doing so, changing the world.
The more I thought about all the moms who’ve touched my life this year, the more thank-yous I felt compelled to express. So here goes:
Thank you to my mother-in-law, who encourages me, pampers me, recognizes me and most of all listens to me. You mean the world to me.
Thank you to my sisters, sisters-in-law and aunts, all mothers who continually show me a new perspective on parenting, and love my kids like their own.
Thank you to the friends I’ve had since way before motherhood, the ones I’ve had the privilege of seeing become mothers themselves, which has given us a whole new dimension to our friendships. When our kids play together, my heart melts.
Thank you to the mom friends I have who I’ve never met face to face but who know more about me – not to mention the eating, sleeping and pooping habits of my kids — than most people I see regularly. (You should all be thankful for them.)
Thank you to the mom in Walmart who stopped alongside my cart one day last winter, as my boys were bickering and teasing and whining, to say, “It’s OK to hate this part now; just know the whole thing goes so fast that someday you’ll actually wish to go back to a moment like this. Hang in there.” I’ve drawn strength from your words more than once.
Thank you to the moms at my church who are showing my kids God’s love for them through our community of faith.
Thank you to the mom who reached out anonymously a couple months ago to help our family when she knew we were struggling.
Thank you to the neighbor mom who graciously switched around her family’s entire schedule for the following night to accommodate my last-minute request to babysit so I could catch a rock concert two hours away.
Thank you to the moms at preschool who either didn’t flinch or offered words of empathy while watching me haul my tantruming 2-year-old over my shoulder as he kicked and screamed and tried to escape after dropping off his brother. All three times.
Thank you to mom bloggers like Rebecca Woolf, who makes me want to be a better writer and a more stylish, creative, successful or at the very least more laid-back mom.
Thank you to moms who are trying to make a difference not just in their child’s life but in the life of all children.
Thank you to all my mom friends who rallied in prayer for a fellow mom none of us had ever met but who was battling for her life. She is winning, and her kids are winning, in part because of you.
Thank you to the mom who offered to buy me a hot cup of coffee that frigid December morning when I stood alone outside ringing the Salvation Army bell. I turned down your kindness, but it warmed my heart anyway.
Thank you to the moms of adopted kids, especially my friend Stacey, who just returned from Moscow with the court’s approval for her and her husband to adopt a very lucky little boy. Your family’s love story is an example for us all.
Thank you to my friends who are stepmoms for opening their hearts to invest in the lives and futures of children they didn’t bear but love unconditionally nonetheless.
Thank you to my newly single mom friends who are doing what’s excruciatingly difficult now to make their children’s lives easier in the long run.
Thank you to all the moms in my life who pray when I ask for prayers, encourage when I need support, forgive me when I screw up, and “like” every single kid-related status update, blog post and photo I share. You are gold, and I am rich for knowing you.
Finally, thanks, Mom, for showing me yet again how selflessness pays dividends in ways you can’t imagine. As Kostyn would say, “I love you 100!”
The first time I read about the upcoming Mothers’ Tea at Kostyn’s preschool, I was a little apprehensive. Will I have to dress up? Will I have to talk to the other moms? I’m not especially good at either. I’m not even a big fan of tea. I quietly put it on our Google calendar and began to fret. Excited, of course, but oddly nervous.
Every week there it was on the weekend handout sent home in Kostyn’s bookbag. Finally, last week, I mentioned it to him.
“Do you know what’s happening next week at school?” I asked. “Mommy is coming to your class on Thursday for a special Mothers’ Tea.” His smile lit up my world, and I swear to you in that moment I would have guzzled homemade tea he’d brewed himself with muddy puddle water and clovers from the yard. I was On Board with the Mothers’ Tea. Stoked. Hell I would have worn a dress if someone told me I had to. (Thankfully, I didn’t.)
On my way to his school that afternoon I was thinking about how far we’ve come, Kostyn and I. He’s a full-fledged little boy now. Gone are the baby cheeks, the diapers, the toddler speech, even the tantrums (for the most part). When we dance it’s rarely with him in my arms. There is a lot less “Mommy, I want to hold you” (his way of saying “pick me up”) and a lot more “Mommy, watch this.” He’s a daydreamer and a bookworm and I swear some type of musical savant. At school he’s among the smallest but not the least bit shy (apparently the recipient of some recessive “extrovert” gene). My little K Man. Anyway, I’m not the type to pine for days gone by, but I knew this was one I’d want to freeze-frame.
When I arrived the moms were lined up in the hallway with a teacher calling each student individually to escort his or her mom to her seat. One by one they walked to the doorway and took their moms’ hands, practiced manners and proud smiles on every last kid.
“Kostyn,” said Mrs. Bratton when I hit the front of the line. He walked until he saw me, then ran and jumped into my arms. My. Heart. Exploded. We could have walked right out the door and I would have declared it the best Mothers’ Tea in the history of Mothers’ Teas.
But it got cuter.
He was supposed to lead me to my seat, but my little daydreamer had forgotten where he’d put his presents for me. We wandered from place to place until one of his teachers started checking the backs of the gifts, looking for his name. I should have known he’d have set his stuff down next to his buddy Mason U. (not to be mixed up with Mason G.), who I’m pretty sure he declares is his best friend because of Mason U.’s similar stature. I hunched down into the tiny chair, bumping knees and purses with other moms as our kids climbed into our laps.
Once we were all seated, Kostyn’s head teacher, who has the personality of a rock, opened with an exceptionally warm “The mothers can open their presents now.” That was it. So, we did.
Those teachers know exactly what they’re doing when they sit kids down and have them answer questions about Mommy in favorable ways. The whole room melted, people. I know parenting is about unconditional love and all, but there’s something about seeing your son answer the question “What makes your mom smile” with “showing her my face” that erases all those grocery store meltdowns in one fell swoop.
The tea turned out to be tea-less – there were pretzels and donut holes and lemonade – and the kids sat on the storytime carpet to give us moms a bit more room at the little tables. I had envisioned getting one-on-one time with my son, but instead I chatted with Mason U.’s mom, whose Mother’s Day paper listed her as being special because she makes great cookies (“My cookies are pretty good,” she said) and that he likes it when she takes Mason fishing, which she said she has never done.
I glanced back at what Kostyn had written about me. At first all his answers had seemed sort of sweetly generic, but when I thought about it from his perspective, mine changed. I thought about how when he was really little I’d sit by his bed at night and, when he’d ask for me to tell him a story in the dark, I’d tell him a tale I wrote as a kid, about a boy and a rainbow. He loved it, and he loves rainbows because of it. When we go somewhere that offers face painting, the other boys get Spider-Man and lightning bolts. Kostyn gets a rainbow.
Then I thought about how he’s always asking me “How tight can you hug me Mommy?” and I squeeeeeeeze really hard, but not really, until he’s satisfied.
And I thought about how often I grab him and hold his face in my hands and say “This face! I just love this face.” And how it’s just one of those “thinking out loud” moments but how he must hear me, and remember what my own face looks like when I’m saying it.
After the “tea” was finished, Kostyn insisted on carrying all my presents to the car despite my repeated protests. The nervousness I felt watching him balance my precious trivet under his arm all the way across the parking lot made me realize why my own mother has kept most every painted rock my sisters and I ever gave her.
We hit up Dairy Queen on the way home, and after deliberating over the menu for several minutes he chose a chocolate-vanilla twist cone with rainbow sprinkles. About five licks in, he dropped it. His face fell, shocked and sad, and I got a lot of mothering self-satisfaction out of fetching a new one for him. Knowing the day will come when I can’t solve his problems makes a dropped ice cream cone even more of a Mom Saves the Day no-brainer.
When we arrived home and I unbuckled his seatbelt, he jumped into my arms again. I pulled him tightly to me and thanked him for such a special day. “I really really really really love you,” he said, pulling back to look at me for a reaction. I beamed. He leaned in and whispered into my ear. “I really appreciate you.”
Best. Mothers’ Tea. Ever.
Leah, the gorgeous bride.
A beautiful young woman named Leah committed herself to her boyfriend yesterday, exchanging vows in front of an intimate circle of loved ones. Their life together as husband and wife will only last days, if not hours. Leah has cancer, and the end is very, very near. She is barely 21.
I’ve never met Leah, I know of her only through my friend Holly, who is Leah’s cousin and who would do just about anything to change the hands of fate on this day. My friends and I, along with Holly’s family and Leah’s considerable army of loved ones, have prayed and prayed over these last few months. Prayed for a cure. Prayed for remission. Prayed for more time. As the news grew grim our pleas took on different shades. We asked for pain-free days, for laughter-filled moments, for strength, and for peace.
On March 30 she was told she had about eight weeks to live. She stopped all chemo, determined to spend her final weeks being able to taste food, to have the energy to enjoy simple pleasures. She went downhill fast. Two weeks ago, her boyfriend proposed. A week later — April 19 — they were married. Holly, who drove to Indianapolis to be there and hold Leah’s hand, said she was too weak to do much of anything. But “she did do her vows.”
When I read Holly’s message about Leah’s wedding, I thought of a little girl I met last weekend while at my sister Lisa’s house in upstate New York. The little girl is also, ironically, the cousin of a friend. In this case the friend is an 8-year-old neighbor boy named Jake who is such a regular playmate to my nephew and niece that when his parents put up a fence between their yards they included a gate in order to give the kids easy access to one another.
That particular afternoon Lisa and I were watching my boys play on their cousins’ trampoline when we saw Jake and his brother walking toward us, holding the hands of a little girl in a pink tutu. “This is our cousin,” Jake said. Her black leotard was a few shades darker than her tangled hair, a mess of frizzy curls escaping from the ponytail holder that was trying mightily to do its job. She didn’t say much, just watched my boys in amazement as they bounced and giggled.
“Her name is Zoe,” Jake said.
“Do you want to jump too?” my sister asked and she nodded, her eyes wider. “She’s never been on a trampoline before,” Jake said, sounding like a protective older brother. Lisa helped her up the ladder and instinctively we both reached out our hands, assuming she’d be afraid and want to steady herself. But she moved away from us, stepping lightly at first, feeling the give of the net and the odd sensation of falling but not. In a few moments she was jumping, her tutu bouncing up and down, up and down, opposite her little frame.
The big pink flower in her hair didn’t budge, and her smile never quit either, even as she fell again and again. Jake, who had wandered over to play with my niece and nephew, returned to the trampoline. After a few moments he turned to me and said, “She never slows her happiness.” And the way he shook his head gave me the feeling he was talking not about Zoe on the trampoline, but about Zoe.
She never slows her happiness.
I liked the way that sounded. It’s a hard thing to do, to keep an unending supply of sunshine and rainbows trickling through your being. We all have days when everything goes our way and days when the crushing disappointments of life knock the wind out of us. It’s difficult to smile honestly in the face of adversity. It’s hard to make your eyes shine with thankfulness through tears of sorrow. Is it even possible to do both? Should we even want to?
I think so. I think our emotions can swing like a pendulum, but that pendulum can sit on a foundation of happiness, gratitude and faith that we build ourselves. Happiness is a feeling but it’s also a choice, a state of being. Thankfulness too. And love.
Just ask Leah.
When Leah’s health really started to deteriorate, she could have called off the wedding. She could have said to her boyfriend “It’s sweet of you to ask, but no. I can’t marry you.” She could have said, “What’s the point?” But she didn’t. She chose love in the face of death. I’m not saying she had no fears, or doubts, or pain, but in some tiny, unimaginably heartbreaking way, she refused to slow her happiness. That takes guts.
Using Leah as my inspiration and little Zoe and her tutu as my visual reminder, I am working on not slowing my happiness, even when I’m anxious and upset (especially when I’m anxious and upset, which happens with some frequency when one’s husband is out of work). Choosing to be happy in those moments feels counterproductive at first, like I’m hampering my own true emotions. But then it feels intuitive, like a natural state. We are born to be happy. It’s not that we need to practice opening the happiness valve, it’s that we need to practice not wrenching it shut every time something doesn’t go our way.
Holly said yesterday Leah could barely keep her eyes open. Her breath was labored. She’s in obvious pain. But “she did do her vows.” Suffocated by a million “I never wills,” she found the breath to say “I do.”
Leah, you just did something the rest of us have trouble doing when we stub our toes. Thank you for that example, and congratulations on your wedding. May you rest in love, and happiness.
[Postscript: Leah began an eternity of happiness on April 23, 2012, with loved ones by her side until the end.]
The fact that they look like angels when they're (finally) asleep is not a coincidence. God is SMART, people.
Last night I attempted to put a very overtired Evan to bed. This involved three simple things.
1. Getting him out of the tub and into his pajamas.
2. Brushing his teeth.
3. Putting him in bed.
Three steps to bed. If you don’t have children, you might think there’s only a handful of decisions to be made there. You would of course be wrong. There are actually 137 decisions to be made in that three-step process, and the 2-year-old must make every single one. Actually that’s not right, he needs to make most of them, but definitely wants You to initiate certain things, and expects you to telepathically understand when the invisible ball is in your court. And you only have a certain number of seconds to recognize that ball, find it and tap it ever-so-lovingly back across the net to him, or else the ball will explode in your face in a giant wad of fiery tears and trust me when I say that No Other Ball will adequately replace the ball that YOU CAUSED TO EXPLODE, YOU IDIOT PARENT WITH YOUR FALSE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT HOW HE USUALLY LIKES THE PAJAMAS WITH THE CARS ON THEM.
Again if you’re unfamiliar with the toddler set, here are just a handful of the excruciatingly important decisions hidden within just the very first! of those three small steps:
- Whether he wants to be lifted out of the tub or climb out himself.
- Who picks up the last toy from the tub and puts it in the bin.
- Which one of them gets the striped towel.
- The way the towel wraps around his dripping-wet body.
- The intolerable injustice of the towel momentarily falling off his shoulder. (OK I know that’s not a decision either one of us could possibly make but trust me when I say it’s STILL MY FAULT WHEN IT HAPPENS.)
- Whether he wants me to towel-dry his hair in the bathroom or in the bedroom.
- Whether or not he wants to sit on my lap or stand while I towel-dry his hair.
- Whether or not that last decision becomes null and void when he sees his naked brother scamper down the hallway.
- Whether or not it’s possible for all of us to rewind time and return to the bathroom once the scampering all over the damn place is finished so that he can again sit on my lap (or stand!?) to dry off even though he is now dry.
- Whether or not he wants to put on his own Pull-Up.
- How he wants me to put on his Pull-Up.
- How he doesn’t want me to put on his Pull-Up.
- The top-secret, as-yet-undiscovered, never-been-tried-before method by which he wants me to put on his Pull-Up. Or not.
- Whether or not he ever wants to wear a Pull-Up again, or anything for that matter.
- Whether or not my threats of leaving him naked for the rest of his life are empty or real.
- Whether or not he wants to pick his own pajamies. (Side note: He says “pajameees,” not “pajamas,” which I find adorable in a way that makes me sense God does that sort of thing on purpose to keep parents from killing their children on evenings such as this.)
- How long he should silently and stoically contemplate the pajama-selecting decision while I hold open the drawer and repeatedly ask him which ones he wants to wear.
- Whether or not he will lose his mind when I severely narrow his choices for him.
- Whether or not I’ll hold him when he’s crying inconsolably over not picking his pajamies.
- How quickly he is able to stop crying when he realizes his brother is dressed and is singing and dancing around him.
- How long he is able to continue his own impromptu naked dancing before his mother loses her mind.
See? Easily blew through 21 decisions (and when I say “easily” I mean “VERY FAR FROM EASILY”) and only managed to move from the bathroom to the bedroom. Still naked. No pajamas on. No teeth brushed. No bedtime in sight. (Just to be clear here, and let’s be honest specifically because my sister read this post and said “You’re giving him too many choices,” I want to clarify that these are not choices I’m giving him to make. It’s not like I’m standing in the bathroom holding two towels asking him to pick one. Or asking him where he wants his hair dried. Or how he wants his Pull-Up on. These are just random things he suddenly decides are happening in a completely wrong way and must be altered immediately. Got it, sis?)
It was a long night. It was the kind of night that ended — a solid 40 minutes later — with me climbing the stairs three times over water. Because he wanted some. But then he didn’t. But then he did. But then I brought it in the wrong kind of cup (“Tough break, little man”) so he wouldn’t take it. So I brought it back downstairs, which infuriated him because oh yeah turns out he wanted it. (“TOUGH BREAK! GO TO SLEEP!!”) So he came down and got it himself and brought it upstairs, then called for me to come get it and take it away. And when I didn’t he screamed, loudly, for a very long time, and finally fearing he would wake his brother I climbed the stairs to fetch his water that he’d turned down twice and then gotten himself, but it turns out he wanted me to take it IN THE MORNING, MOMMY, NOT NOW, and he was just crying because he was still torqued about the fact that I hadn’t brought us all back into the bathroom to sit on my lap and dry off after he had dried himself off by running down the hall wet and naked and jumping on my bed.
I then spent three minutes trying to piece together the puzzle of proper pillow position combined with the best blanketed body to exposed body ratio. And when all that was finished, when the last kiss had been deposited on his still-furrowed brow, I left. Again. Mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted, I flopped back down the stairs, only to hear his voice cry out from the darkness when I was exactly halfway to freedom.
“Mommy?” he called quietly. There was a softness to his little squeak. I could tell this wasn’t going to be a complaint or demand. Still, I braced myself.
“Yes. Evan?” I answered as sweetly as I could between clenched teeth.
“Tomorrow I’m going to wear the pajamies with the cars.”
Well played, God.
[The Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon is a 46-hour (no sitting, no sleeping, some crying) event that raises money for the Four Diamonds Fund at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. Thanks to the Four Diamonds Fund, no family facing the heartache of pediatric cancer is ever turned away because of an inability to pay. And THON is instrumental in helping to keep that promise: Since it began in 1973, THON has raised more than $78 million. It is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. It is amazing. It is equal parts rock concert and pep rally, carnival and talent show, family reunion and giant Zumba class on Red Bull. And it is this weekend. You can check it out in real-time here. And you can donate to the cause here.]
My THON story spans 17 years and is marked by three letters to different members of the same family, each meaning more than the last.
My first THON letter was written to Lauren Carrano in January 1995. I was a senior and had scored a coveted slot as a THON dancer in the then-48-hour marathon held every February at Penn State’s University Park campus. As luck would have it, my partner would be one of my best friends and roommates, Betsy. She and I were given Lauren’s name as a pen-pal, someone we were encouraged to write to in order to make a personal connection with a Four Diamonds Fund family. We would be dancing for all the Four Diamonds kids, but specifically in honor of Lauren.
Lauren was 7 and in the second grade, with two siblings — Ashley, 9, and Vinny, 6. Lauren’s mom, Irene, wrote back and told us that Lauren had leukemia but that she was in remission. Her last round of chemo had just finished, and she’d remained upbeat through it all. The cancer, Irene wrote, had been particularly hard on Ashley and Vinny.
Left to right: Irene Carrano, me, Betsy and Lauren during THON 1995.
THON weekend passed in an emotional, sleep-deprived blur. We met the Carranos on the dance floor that weekend and played with Lauren for awhile, but they were whisked off to several Four Diamonds Family functions throughout those 48 hours. That year we raised over $1.1 million. As the marathon culminated in an emotional few hours on Sunday evening and the crowd swelled into the thousands to hear the impressive fundraising total, we didn’t get a chance to reconnect with the Carranos and say goodbye.
Still, I was relieved that our little dance partner was winning the battle. I was happy that she had the energy to play with us, and that her family’s story would have a happy ending. I was 22, and naive to cancer’s devastation.
After a thank-you letter from Irene later that spring, we lost touch. Betsy and I graduated in May and went our separate ways. I met a great guy at my first “real” job, and the following spring we moved South together. Two years later, he was diagnosed with cancer.
I thought about THON, and about Lauren, quite a bit during those long months of surgeries and chemo. I wondered how such a slight little girl could have smiled through the same kinds of drugs that were knocking this grown man to his knees. I had a new respect and understanding for what Irene and her husband went through, too. And eventually, I came to feel the terrifying hopefulness in the word “remission,” how it does not necessarily mean “happy ending”; instead it drops you in an uneasy waiting place somewhere between sick and well.
But he did get well. And we got married. I got my happy ending after all.
Less than four years later, Betsy and I reconnected at Penn State for the bachelorette party of our other roommate, Kim. She chose the weekend of THON for the reunion, so Bets and I made sure to stop by Rec Hall, where it was now being held. We sat way up in the bleachers and watched the chaos below. It was bigger and louder, but otherwise comfortingly familiar. It was the winter of 2003, my first time back on campus since I’d graduated eight years before.
As we sat taking in the whole scene, I noticed a familiar-looking woman walking up the stairs toward us. She sat down a few rows in front of us. I couldn’t place where I knew her from, so I looked at the man sitting next to her, presumably her husband. He was wearing a jacket that had several THON patches on it … it looked like one for just about every year since 1995. Embroidered across the back of his jacket was “Lauren Nicole Carrano — 1987-1996. Forever in our hearts.”
It was Lauren’s parents. She’d died the year after we danced for her at THON.
My heart sank as that news settled into it. We marveled at the coincidence of them being right in front of us eight years later, in a crowd of hundreds, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to them. As soon as we left, I regretted that. So when I returned to South Carolina I dug out my old THON letters and wrote a new one, this one to Irene, hoping they might still live at the same address. I told her about seeing them, and about Chris’s cancer, and about how Betsy and I remember Lauren, and always will.
She wrote back a month later, stunned and touched that her daughter lived on in our hearts. The letter warmed me from the inside out, but again we lost touch.
Another eight years went by before my path crossed once again with the Carranos’. This time, I received a Facebook friend request from Irene. At first I didn’t recognize the name, but a few days later she sent me a direct message, reintroducing herself, saying she had looked me up and was hoping I was the same Robyn Passante who had reached out to her almost a decade before. I accepted her friend request, and we caught up on our families and lives. She told me Ashley was now a mother, and Vinny, who was in kindergarten when I met him that THON weekend way back in ’95, had just returned from serving in Afghanistan as a Marine. He was starting school at Penn State, and though he’s just a freshman, he’d been picked to dance in this year’s THON, in memory of his sister.
So last week I wrote a new letter to yet another Carrano — this one to Vinny. It will be given to him during Mail Call this weekend, along with one from Betsy and no doubt a host of others from family and friends. When the dancers’ legs are aching and they’re starting to wonder how in the hell they’ll stay awake and on their feet for another whole night and day, the magic of Mail Call happens, when each dancer is handed a huge packet of love and encouragement from friends and family — and sometimes strangers.
Lauren died much, much too young, from a disease I wish was wiped from the face of the earth. But she does continue to live inside people she touched, even for the briefest of moments many years ago. It is a hollow consolation, I’m sure, but it is the best I can offer her family. I’m so proud of what Vinny and the other 707 dancers are doing this weekend, and I can’t wait to hear this year’s fundraising total. In 2011, THON raised an astounding $9.5 million.
It’s true what they say: THON never leaves your heart, and neither do the kids you dance for. FTK Forever!
Postscript: The dancers are done and the totals are in: This year’s THON shattered last year’s record by over $1 million — 2012 THON raised more than $10.6 million for kids facing pediatric cancer!! And I hear that Vinny spoke during Family Hour, bringing the crowd of thousands to tears with his story about losing his sister, Lauren, and how much the only THON she attended, back in 1995, meant to her, and continues to mean to his family. Congratulations Vinny and everyone else involved with such an outstanding event.
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