Monday is a big day. Not because it marks the first Monday Night Football game of the season. Not because it starts the first full week of school for the kids. Not even because it is Amy Winehouse’s birthday (one of Jordan’s favorite singers). Monday, September 14th may be the end of a road we’ve been traveling for five years. Jordan goes in for an MRI that morning. If her scans show the same progress we’ve seen for the last 12 months, Jordan will stop all chemotherapy.

Good Morning We are determined. Jordan will read. It is our conviction, shared with her doctors, her teachers, her family and friends. It is the gift that eludes her, yet she never alludes to her disappointment. She pretends to read, scanning through books and improvising passages of story. She recalls everything that is read to her, sometimes with alarmingly detailed comprehension. On the advice of a friend, we started buying her iTunes versions of books that are required in school.

We underestimated traffic and we misinterpreted basic coordinates. By ‘we’ I mean ‘me.’ Caught up in the move, we missed the opening of the latest Harry Potter movie. Jeanette and I promised the kids we’d see it in theatres. Then another weekend went by, and another. By the time I actually got around to buying tickets, the movie was only playing in a few theatres. I found one with stadium seating and assumed the “marina” in the theatre name meant Marina Del Rey, which is not far from here.

Our family is exhausted and ecstatic, with just a touch of dazed and confused nostalgia. We moved from Pasadena to Santa Monica last Friday. Actually, the accurate description is that we moved Friday through Monday. Over the nearly 20 years we lived in Pasadena, we accumulated an awful lot of stuff. Moving from a large place to a smaller place is not fun. But the last batch makes its way over today and then we will officially be “out” so we can focus on moving “in.

I was barely through the door when the scream erupted from her cupid bow mouth. She shouted protests and raised her voice as I set my keys upon the ledge. In the stalemate with her mother, she was emphatic about her position: she would not leave the room. When this position gained no ground, she hurled another scream upon the roof beams and shook the house with an aching tantrum. Welcome home, Dad.