More Counting

This year was a Jewish leap year, and so we added a whole month to our calendar. Because of that, this year there were almost exactly 100 days between the last day of Chanukah and the day of Purim.

Two holidays on which we talk about miracles.
Two holidays that are often compared, with latkes and hamantaschen at the center of many a debate. (I'm a latke girl myself, even though I do love hamantaschen. Oh, who am I kidding? I can't decide.)

Two holidays that are beloved by Jewish children everywhere. Including mine.

One hundred days ago, on the last day of Chanukah, was day +100, one hundred days post-transplant. Transplant was all about counting days. So, yes, Purim would have begun as we counted Day +200 for Sammy's transplant. I can only imagine how we would have celebrated this milestone. Would his immune system have been strong enough for him to don a costume and come to the Purim Carnival? How many hamantaschen would he have folded and pinched and filled? Would we have created a group costume, something to link the fearsome foursome? (How much convincing would it have taken everyone to go along with being all the characters in Frozen? Who would have been the reindeer?) Would the turtle backpack still be a part of his daily life or would he be free of permanent IVs at this point? Would we have brought plates of hamantaschen to the clinic to share with our friends, inducting many of them, probably for the first time, into the ways of chocolate-nutella-filled-triangular pastries?

So many questions....what would have been....

If you haven't noticed, by nature, I count things. When Solomon was born, I posted a daily picture of him, counting his life in days. It was silly and fun, and I would joke that on each subsequent year,  I would actually post his age in days rather than years. (He's 1,196 days old, by the way.) But that counting fell away eventually, and I had to look up that number today instead of knowing...I once had a conversation with a BMT parent-friend about how long we would count their days of transplant. What would Day +10,000 look like, we wanted to know? How old would our children be...wait, how old would we be?! We imagined, we laughed, we may have shed a few tears of gratitude at that moment.

Will I ever stop counting the days?
Psalm 90 tells us: Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (vs 12)
I probably won't stop counting.
I'm waiting for the wisdom to catch up....

BMT +100

Sammy at Chanukah, about 100 days ago

Solly at 100 days....this is pretty much exactly what Sam looked like too. I just don't have a daily picture to prove it.

This is Day 119 for Solly and Day 1980 for Sammy. 

June, 2008 -- practicing for Purim