There are days when I can't budge. I am angry and cranky and the tears come and come until my head hurts, and then they come some more. I weep and I rage and it's not fair to my family. They take the brunt of my outbursts.
Then there are days when I want to do something. Anything. I don't care what it is. I just want progress.
I will share the fundraiser for the family of the newly diagnosed child because I know what it's like to be there. To be scared. To be full of hope.
I will promote the collection of shoes that are sold to raise money for childhood cancer research.
Blood drive? Sure. I'll help with that.I'll give blood. I'll pass out juice to the donors.
I will buy cookies at the bake sale for childhood cancer research on the folding table down the street put on by the little girls who went to school with my son and miss him on Valentine's day. I do too.
I'll shave my head.
I'll do anything.
I am pulled in a million directions and I wonder if I am spread too thin to do any good.
Kind of like the childhood cancer community.
I suspect Jonathan Agin-lawyer, advocate, bereaved dad, writer-would agree with me. I admire him. First of all, he's smart, he's a lawyer, he's an excellent writer. He and his wife have helped to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars with The Cure Starts Now/Race Against the Odds.
Next to him, I know nothing. I am no one. I am a mother. Sure, I went to college. But I was educated as an elementary school teacher. I don't know how to make medicine, money, and politics work together to find a cure for children's cancers.
Mr. Agin's been tweeting a lot lately. Cryptically. His tweets point out problems I already know exist: The childhood cancer community is "insular" and needs to "gain efficacy." Each tweet is part accusation, part open-ended question.
I don't know the answers. I wait with bated breath for new tweets that will hopefully reveal some sort of mastermind game plan.
How, Jonathan? Tell us what to do.
