Magic

 

Zoe and Bubbles at Werribee Zoo

My Dearest Zoe,

What a beautiful day today. The sun is shining and it is what one might say is a perfect day. Yesterday it was a little cloudier and cooler and we went to visit the Werribee Zoo with your mom and dad and grandpa, Chief. The Zoo is very close by and now that your mom and dad have a year pass I bet you will be going often to see the cheetah, gorillas and many other animals. It is a wonderful zoo with the animals in very good environments. I remember visiting that zoo when I was here before you were born. We talked about it being a great place that one day your mom and dad will want to take you to. That was when you were still a thought! But with the magic of a unicorn, an animal never found in a zoo but one that is mythical, rare and precious, you were brought into the world. This magical story is part of the miracle that is you. Your mother could not carry you in her body so a special, beautiful and kind woman offered to carry you until you were ready to be in the world. This was an unbelievably generous gift for our family and considered as magical and rare as the unicorn known in fables. I love that you were carried with the sincere generosity of a woman who was already a loving mother dedicated to giving a gift so precious to your mom and dad that it was as if your birth was part of a great legend. We are grateful for her every day.

Zoe riding her unicorn...by Sheila White

 

And today we went to visit your totally cool beach shack not far from your home. An artist, Alex was there working on more magic. He was employed to paint birds on the front and inside doors of the shack. As we watched him paint with spray paint cans, his dog, Mango played with us near the water. You laughed and loved being with Mango. We marveled at the exquisite art that was being created. I could not help but feel what was being created was a reflection of the magic of your life. You see, when your mom was your age, 19 months old she was just released from the hospital. We did not know how long she would live or how much damage her lungs had endured. She had lost her ability to walk after being in ICU for such a long time but within a month or so she regained her strength. She also loved animals and later we did have dogs as pets. I am sure you will have one too. I am so grateful that you are healthy and strong and were playing near the shore today.

Anna and Alex

This contrast of you and your mom at your age is an example of how miraculous our moments together are. At so many points in time between your mom's diagnosis and your birth, a different story,  a different chapter of our life could have been written. But it was not. This is the magic of your mom's life and the tender thread of life that is so fragile and so very strong of spirit at the same time. Your mom faced many, many days of being ill, many days and weeks in the hospital, many days waiting for a life saving surgery with the gift of new lungs. Transplant is a miracle surgery. It can not be scheduled. Your mom had to prepare for the surgery, be accepted for it and wait as long as it would take to find the right set of lungs from a donor who would have lost their life at the same time that they would save another. That is a miraculous, magical and other worldly business.

There are a few stories that I will tell you over time about serendipity, when all the right pieces of a puzzle that were known and unknown came together for your mother. People who brought her healing, and the clear determination of your mom to survive and to get what ever it was that she needed to be happy. One such serendipity was her meeting your dad. He had come to the United States to participate in the Transplant Games and your mom happened to be there too. But remember that serendipity and those puzzle pieces that came together to create a story of love happened because life was perfect in all its ways, in the difficult and the good. It was because your mom had CF and then had a double lung transplant that she went to those games where your dad was and they fell in love. It was also because of your dad's challenges and having cornea transplants that he was there to meet your mom. The strange and perplexing thing is, if all those challenges for both of them had not happened things would be so different.  I would not be here loving you and telling you this story with out it all being perfectly the way it should be.

How can it be that through such difficult and painful trials miracles can happen? That is a mystery of life we can ponder. Your mom and I call it magic. We have seen a lot of it. But, I think you have to be willing to believe magic exists before you can see it, feel it and know it. It pops up when tragedy strikes and when all is well. You have to look for it and when you do Zoe the world begins to make a lot more sense. There is good and bad in our lives and sometimes we can not make sense of it because we feel so much pain, but if you believe in magic and serendipity and miraculous circumstances then you find hope and love and meaning in the craziness of it all. We will have to have many more talks about this as time passes.

Tomorrow we will go back to the beach shack to see what else Alex has painted. He said he will complete the project. I can not wait to see how beautiful it will be. You can play with his dog, Mango again and I am sure it will be another perfect day....

Love you,

Bubbles