I feel lost.

I went to see Mamma Mia tonight with a bunch of my girlfriends. Good, good, good, all the way around. Ignore any bad reviews. It's a fun romp. Yeah, Brosnan can't sing, but that's just part of the fun. More to laugh at.

But I couldn't quite lose myself. I would escape for a moment and then think, I have to go back to that world.

It's not that I don't want to be at home, or even at the hospital, with Little Warrior. Really, truly. If she has to go through it, then I want to be with her.

If she has to go through it ... I don't want her going through it, plain and simple. When she went in for this last surgery, to examine the "spots" that we desperately hoped would not be what they were, after watching her go back to the OR, I walked to the food court area. On the way, I passed a young bald girl, pushing an IV. And I nearly fell down, thinking, "Please please please ... I don't want to go back to that world. I don't want to go back to cancer world. Let her be okay."

I'm back, and now it's all so normal that as I said to the BFF-DRE, kids with hair look a little strange to me.

I talked recently with other cancer parents about "chemo eyes." I don't know what causes it, but occasionally LW gets HUGE eyes. Cancer eyes. It's not just the dark circles under her eyes. Her eye color changes; they get darker and bigger. Other parents knew what I was talking about and agreed.

I feel like I have cancer eyes, too, but mine aren't dark and big. My eyes droop, they just feel so heavy. "Heavy with unshed tears" would be a quite poetic line, but I'm shedding plenty of tears. Plenty.

Mamma Mia is a romp, but I almost lost it, once. Meryl Streep sings Slipping Through My Fingers, a song about watching your daughter grow up so fast. Of course, I couldn't help by have a different interpretation ...

I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I'm losing her forever...

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it

It's so so heavy. Looking at this sprite, because with her fine floss of hair, big eyes and impish grin, she looks like she should have wings on her back and be creeping around your garden in the early morning ... looking at her, getting smaller, I can't help the snake that enters my body and winds itself around my heart.

And if I'm going to be really, really self-focused (but I promised myself that I would be honest on this blog, which includes the bad and the ugly), I have to admit that there was also a bit of me sad at the movie because as Meryl Streep dances around, I know I can't dance right now. The free spirit, dancing, somewhat crazy hippie girl ... she doesn't live here anymore.

You'll be dancing once again and the pain will end

Maybe. I hope. Right now, it seems a million miles from here. It feels the heaviness won't ever end. And heavier still, I realize this might be the good times.

It might get worse.