Chicken Cacciatore

We had a wonderful dinner last night -- chicken cacciatore, rice, and roasted vegetables.

It was delicious, but the really wonderful part was that we didn't even make it ourselves. Some friends made it for us and delivered it to us. We've known these folks for a long time; one of their sons is a classmate and teammate of Peter. They knew we were having a rough week last week, with Peter's broken finger, Isabel's mom's broken shoulder, and my starting treatment all piling up within a few days. So they aksed if they could make us dinner.

At first, we resisted, to be honest. We know the ritual of making dinner for people who are going through rough patches, especially illness. We've done it for others. But we really didn't need someone to make dinner. Easy enough to order pizza -- we do that often enough on a weekend night. But we also know that this isn't just about the food. It's about making a connection. And we really appreciate that.

I've read articles about therapists asking cancer patients to think about the good things that can come about from having cancer. That's not an easy thing, when you're in the middle of it. But then cancer patients realize that, well, "having cancer has finally gotten me to stop smoking," or maybe "it's gotten me to appreciate how hard my mom has always worked."

For us, the whole cancer thing has made us realize how blessed we are to have so much support, not just from family, which hasn't been surprising, but from the friends we've made here. Not having family immediately close by (especially when we know so many people who do) is hard sometimes. And at time's we've felt a little isolated. We have plenty of friends, and nearly all of them have kids, the same age as ours, maybe some a little older or younger. But that also means they're mostly in the same kind of situation as us -- busy as heck, and so we don't get together as often as we'd like. And so it's been easy to forget about the connections we've made with other people here over twelve years.

And then we have a week like we had, and we realize that those connections are still there. The good folks who made us dinner weren't the only ones who have offered -- they were just the ones who were most insistent, and who wouldn't take No for an answer. (For those others who have offered -- please don't take it personally. We hope that we won't have to call on you, but we know we can, and that feels great.)

When Isabel was being pulled in three directions -- being with her mom, being with Peter for surgery, and being with me for my second treatment -- we had four people volunteer to drive me to the doctor and sit with me for four hours. That was a great comfort. And that doesn't even include my mom and my brother, who have also volunteered.

So we had a wonderful dinner last night. Besides the cacciatore, rice, and veggies, it also came with a vase of flowers, a chocolate cake, a list of ingredients to show what was safe for our food-allergic son, and (because the cake wasn't safe) a large jar of Skittles and Swedish Fish, because those things are safe, and they're his favorites, and our friends took the time to find that out.

So, cancer, on the whole, pretty much sucks, but there's a whole lot of good that shines through -- so brightly that you don't even need to go looking for it on your own.