Cooking For Louise

 

This afternoon Sydney and I spent a few hours in the kitchen making some home cooked meals for my friend Louise.  Louise and I met three years ago in our prenatal fitness class.  She is a physiotherapist and quite possibly one of the kindest, sweetest, most thoughtful people I have ever met in my life.  I loved her from the minute I met her!  She had her sweet Sophie on November 1st, exactly one day before Sydney was born.  In fact, while I was getting wheeled upstairs to my room at the hospital, minutes after I had delivered Syd, I ran into Louise and her husband walking the halls!  It was so fun having a buddy on the maternity ward for a few days!

Louise was just diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer.  This has rattled me to the core.  When you have a toddler, the last thing in the world you imagine is your own health failing you.  It is the furthest thing from your mind on any given day when you are pouring yourself into your kids.  As a mother, there is something so unnatural about having to take time to care for your own needs above your children's, and yet, at this moment in time, this is exactly what Louise must do.

I desperately want to help, yet feel so powerless, helpless really.  So I hit my kitchen with a vengeance this afternoon and made some dishes for Louise in fitting with a new, very strict vegan ++ diet that she's on.  In the end, it turned out pretty well, mixed vegetable curry and a cashew paella.

I packed everything away in takeaway containers and decorated the tops with fun stickers and tomorrow morning will drive to Louise's house and quietly leave them on her front step.  She has just finished her first  of sixteen rounds of chemotherapy and I can imagine she is likely not feeling all that great right now!

While I was cooking, Sydney, oddly enough, sat on the kitchen floor playing ever so quietly by herself.  When I finally looked up to see what she was doing, I realized that she had raided her art basket and this is what I saw:

Playdough and paint everywhere!  Now, normally this would get my blood boiling a bit, being that I'm trying to keep the house neat and all, but today I was just grateful to be healthy and happy and hanging out with Syd and that she was so well behaved while I was cooking.  So I laughed and cleaned it up...water off a duck's back.

Louise has given me a new perspective of gratitude for oh so many things.  As she bravely fights this demon, I, along with a slew of other Mommas will be right behind her cheering her on all the way!

My sweetie brought me a little something today when she got back from the park with Daddy late this afternoon, a jasmine bloom.  Love it!  Smells like a little bit of heaven and so fitting seeing my sweet angel thought to bring it to me!