Shel Silverstein wrote in The Giving Tree, “And she loved a boy very, very much, even more than she loved herself.”

My “boy” just turned thirty a couple months ago and a little over a week ago, he asked the love of his life, beyond me of course, to marry him.

I’ve heard it said that  “a son is a son ’til he takes a wife; a daughter is a daughter the rest of her life.” But in our case, I have high hopes that my son, at least occasionally, will choose his mama for a Chrismas or two and maybe a vacation once every few years.

You see, we have been through a lot together, my boy and me.  Since he was a senior in high school he has had six or so major surgeries. Two of them day-long brain resections, a neurosurgeon’s fancy word for brain surgery. (https://askmrsmom.com/?p=397)  He has survived treatment for two cancers, has been declared cured of one and continues to be monitored for the other.

At the beginning of this cancer journey, a road we are forced on and never take by choice, I let my mind go to the worst case scenerio at every test result, path report and doctor’s visit.  But as time passed and he still woke up smiling, I learned to lean into every moment we had together, all of us as a family. And slowly I went from living one day at a time to one step at a time and finally one breath at a time.

Nothing like a healthy awareness of death to make living all that more precious.

So this news that we are adding another member to our family is joyous on so many levels. My positive, follow-me-I-am-invincible son has led me to yet another happy place.  He has lived and loved and hoped and dreamed. And more than a decade after his first diagnosis, he is healthy and getting married.

What’s more, this beautiful woman he has chosen to spend the rest of his life with is someone I can pass my baton to with confidence. And know she will pick it up with a heart full of love and hope for all their tomorrows.

What more could an old tree stump ask for?