These
are my parents. Mom and Dad. Lillian and Biggy. This is a photo of their engagement
day, my Mother sassy in her crème dress with big bow tie and my Dad
in his blue suit. The good old days. People dressed up for occasions such
as this. And on Valentine’s Day I wanted to show the picture of the
people who have been nurturing me, keeping me in their home during the “bad”
week of chemo. They have no issues feeding me all the quirky foods my taste
buds and stomach can handle: english muffins, peanut butter, swiss cheese,
apples, plain-boiled and tasteless chicken, and lettuce leaves (thanks to
my father’s organic garden.) That is about it. That is all that I can
handle during the bad week following chemo. You’ve got it, my tremendous
diet that leaves me feeling rather lucky I can eat at all. These are the foods
that my life rotates around. Every two hours I try to eat a handful of food
from my secluded diet. And my parents are SAINTS as they keep the house stocked
with such foods, always introducing some other exotic other, perhaps pasta
with two tablespoons of sauce, just enough to wet the noodles. These people
are my parents, the ones who are there by my bedside waiting out the storm
just as anxiously as I. And I love them. Thank you Mom and Dad for every handful,
for every pillow adjustment, for every blanket you lay across my body limp
and exhausted from going into the ring and fighting the most important knockout
fight ever. Thank you. Love, Adriene.
