On the plane home last night I asked myself, “How much money would I pay to share a long weekend with my wife, my two oldest daughters and their husbands riding around the Napa Valley in California like rock stars in a limousine going winery hopping for a fall weekend? $5000? $10,000? More?”
I nudged my wife who was seated next to me in the middle seat and asked her that same question. She looked at me lovingly, her eyes mostly shut and half asleep and whispered, “Does it matter?”
The answer was NO; it didn’t matter, because this past weekend in Napa and Sonoma was priceless.
This morning I am sitting in the waiting room at the Duke Cancer Center preparing for my first five hour chemotherapy intravenous drip of a new drug that will hopefully stabilize the blood in my bone marrow and keep the active leukemia in check for another few months. Only time will tell how effective this new drug will be.
The idea of Napa was set in motion last Christmas when I was celebrating the holidays with my oldest daughters, Sarah and Shelby. As we sipped some wine, I began to pontificate about why the wine we were enjoying was a particularly good one. My daughters and their spouses rolled their eyes and lovingly laughed at me, thinking I was opining about a subject I knew nothing about. After a few jabs back and forth, I told them I would put their lack of knowledge of wines to the test by one day taking them to Napa, where they could also learn for themselves. It was the type of challenge that they gladly accepted. A few weeks later, my wife had set the whole trip up, coordinating with the girls about their fall schedules and plane flights and booking an entire weekend in San Francisco and Napa Valley.
But, if you follow my saga, it was three weeks ago that my blood counts tanked and a bone marrow biopsy revealed new active leukemia. Because of this, the doctors formed a new treatment plan using an IV drip, which, as fate would have it, was scheduled for the week of our Napa excursion. But true to my basic life attitude, I convinced my doctors to let me postpone the chemo until after Napa, and they agreed. Some things are just more important than others, and this trip was one of them.
Now going to Napa isn’t even a bucket list item for me because ten years ago Kate and I got to go as part of a real estate seminar in California and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. But going back to Napa with my daughters and their spouses, well, that was the bucket list item for me.
It was the best kind of gift one can give, something that the recipients can’t or wouldn’t ever do for themselves. And being driven around Napa Valley to highfalutin wine tastings under some of the most beautiful pastel skies, blazing sunsets, and leaves turning color in the wine fields was exactly what I had imagined for my daughters.
My “Sar-Bear” and “Shelbz-Marie” are now 28 and 25, but they will always be Daddy’s girls, my princesses! The fact is that despite what it looked like in the Christmas card photographs through the years, they have endured a difficult childhood; divorce is painful to say the least, and the acrimonious push and pull of two parents who loved them so dearly that they were torn and pulled and tugged in ways only children of divorce can understand. The pain and the wounds run deep, but the Lord has redeemed and renewed our love and our Father-Daughter relationships in a way where only HE could get the glory. Amen to that.
It was so good for my heart to spend so much time with my son in laws as well; watching them laugh and joke and having a great time, while simultaneously tapping into their mature side, tasting wines and showing love for their spouses, each other, and me and Kate. As a father, knowing your daughters have married strong, loving, committed husbands who know the Lord and are passionate about family is one of life’s greatest blessings. It was a beautiful dream of mine fulfilled in the face of this darn leukemia when I got to walk both Sarah and then Shelby down the aisle to their husbands within the last two years. Redemption.
And this weekend was priceless.
I am sure it cost us more than we can afford, especially given my disability, but we can cut back on a few dinners out and movie nights and sit at home and simply enjoy the wine we ordered from each winery we visited! I was reminded of such an important life lesson: we don’t remember days, or invoices, or to-do lists or meetings. WE REMEMBER MOMENTS. And Napa was a moment of a lifetime for this proud dad.
I have tears in my eyes as I type in the cancer center lobby and juxtapose the weekend memory with my chemotherapy infusion set within the next hour. But my prayer is ‘thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.’ Some friends have texted, emailed and Facebooked me to say ‘you got this.’ It made me smile and I emojied them back with a fist pump, a wink and thumbs up (side note: wow, look at you go Scott, Mr. Technology!). It was my first use of emojis, but they were the perfect communicators for those moments.
With that, my nurse waves me back to the treatment room. I will keep our Napa excursion moments and memories forever in my heart. Thanks for letting me share them with you.
Amen and AMEN.