Enjoy your own bed

Tonight, if you crawl into your own bed, take a moment to appreciate it.

Before you nod off, look around your room -- even if it is messy, as mine usually is -- and appreciate how comfortable you feel. Your room. Your womb for the next 6-9 hours.

It's usually something we take for granted. Until you find yourself not in your room. In a hospital room, either for yourself or someone you love.

The night before I took Little Warrior to the doctor ... that turned into the ER ... that turned into the oncology floor ...

The night before all that, my little baby lay next to me in bed, as she did every night. She was blissfully asleep, belly full of milk. I knew I was taking her to the doctor the next day, for some repeated vomiting and a distended abdomen. Perhaps it was some type of a bowel obstruction.

I kissed her forehead and looked around the room, soaking everything in. Consciously soaking everything in. Appeciating the moment. I'll always have this night, I thought to myself. This lovely, normal night.

I don't think my thoughts were particularly prescient. It is the domain of all parents to worry that something big and scary will happen to their child.

(That being said, "Your Baby Has Cancer" was not something I expected to hear.)

Over the next two weeks, I would think back to that night. I guess I still do, because it was the last night of my innocence.

But I also looked back to that night because I was in my room. Messy, things strewn around, blankets twisted. My room. My bed. And it was where I most wanted to be.

Tonight, if you are there, enjoy being in your own bed.