Given that it was the worst summer of my life…it was pretty good! Like many Covidians, I devoted my time and money to making our home a fun place to be stuck all summer. We got a trampoline and a big pool and proceeded to make our backyard into a mini resort.
Rachael completed her first batch of chemo and had major surgery on June 30 to remove the cancer. I can’t believe how quickly she recovered from it! I’d never seen her in so much pain and misery; but a few days later she was up and shuffling about and in good spirits. Within a few weeks she was able to kick back in the pool!
The chemo was quite debilitating and really took the life out of her. It also compromised her immunity, so she had to quarantine in her own room in the house for the whole summer. We all had to get used to not sharing the same space. Fortunately the backyard was safe, and I was able to take lots of time off work to go on outings with Josef.
We went camping on the Santiam with a handful of our usual gang, as the annual family and friends campout was obviously canceled. Josef got his first BB gun and proved to be a pretty good shot! We spent the 4th of July at Walton Lake with the Harberts, and Josef tried out some paddle boarding.
We went back up to Pamelia Lake with 3 other schoolmates and the boys ran wild for 2 days, playing in the water, running around naked in the forest, and scrambling straight up a vertiginous mountainside until the dads all chickened out.
We went to House Rock and spent 4 nights in the deluxe riverside spot where Josef played with the neighboring kids and I relaxed in a hammock. He and I took candles deep into the cave under House Rock and climbed all the way to the back and through a tiny opening up to the daylight, Indiana Jones-style.
There was lots of biking and scootering around the neighborhood. We made a special ritual of delivering donuts to friends every Sunday morning, just so we could keep in touch with folks (and eat donuts!) We often rode downtown to the taco truck for dinner, eating them on the old railroad platform.
Grammannette stayed with us the whole summer, living upstairs with Gramheart and taking care of Rachael and Josef with the energy of a twenty year-old. It is in large part to their efforts that the summer turned out so well.
A huge development was Josef’s friendship with a boy on our block, also named Joseph. His family, like ours, has roots in the neighborhood. All of the Shooks know them well, being next-door neighbors growing up. We all went to the same bus stop and attended the same schools. Now the two Joes, the next generation, could be seen riding scooters around the cul-de-sac, bouncing on the tramp, or swimming almost every day. This took a huge burden off the grownups! It was so wholesome and as close as you could get to “the good ol’ days.”
For my part, I was able to slip away in August for a 5 night, 100 mile, backpacking trip from Hoodoo to mount Hood on the Pacific Crest Trail. Boy did I need that! The weather was absolutely perfect, my body felt great, and my spirits were soaring. Amid the chaos of the year I found a profound sense of peace, happily plodding through old-growth forests filled with greens of every shade.
So all in all–ignoring the one glaring issue in my life–I had a perfectly lovely summer. Filled with camping, adventures, great weather, and chill times in the backyard. And after all the miserable days spent sequestered in her room, the nine awful weeks of chemo, and the nine-inch scar on her belly, Rachael was proclaimed cancer-free and in remission at the end of summer!
Embedding videos has become an issue of late, so Here is a link.
