Happy Birthday Harper

Today is a big day.  Today is Harper's Birthday.

Of course many people are probably currently scratching their heads.  "Wait a minute.  I thought Harper was born in June.  How could today, October 23rd, be her birthday?"

Well, anyone contemplating that conundrum - rest easy.  Your recollection would be right.  Harper did, in fact, enter this world and join us in June of 2005.  However, being born in June doesn't preclude today being her birthday as well.  It sounds a bit like a Lewis Carroll situation, where perhaps Harper is pulling an Alice, and romping around in Wonderland, chasing a white rabbit.

The significance of today does not, however, hing upon smoking caterpillars, vanishing grinning cats, guillotine-obsessed queens with a fetish for hearts, or mad men dressed in velvet top-hats.  Today's significance hinges on a short 60 minute infusion.

Today, after a week of bone marrow killing chemotherapy, Harper's now dying immune system is being rescued and "reborn" - receiving an infusion of her own stem cells.  This is a day we began planning for the day she was diagnosed, and we hoped and prayed this day would never come.  And here it is.

And while the actual experience of getting a 60 minute infusion is nothing in comparison to the months of chemo and weeks of radiation, it is in fact, a major milestone.  After everything Harper has endured, with strength and grace that defies her physical young age, today is her rebirth.  She is once again entering this world anew, the same person, but changed.

Most kids would likely drool over the possibility of two birthdays.  Two days of celebrating.  Two days of gifts, showering of affection. Two days of cake, ice cream, or whatever they desire.  But the price is high, and not something I would willingly offer to anyone who had a choice.

But, we put aside the sad circumstances that has led to this day.  We ignore the discomfort and often excruciating physical and emotional pain for both Harper and us as we have endured the past 17 months.  We raise our heads from the downward and defeated gaze we would otherwise assume if we would just give in to it all.

And we say - Happy Birthday Harper.  May God bless us with many, many more of them.  And if it means buying cake, balloons, and presents multiple times a year to celebrate the great gift of this precious little girl, I'm in.

PS - If all goes as planned, Harper will end up with THREE birthdays (due to a tandem transplant plan which will mean she will do this all again in a few weeks).  That will mean three days a year of celebrating.  And it will be all that much sweeter.