About me: I'm Terri Vandermolen, 42, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Wife to Dave, mom to Hannah (13) and Caleb (10). On September 2, 1998, Caleb was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, ALL, the most common childhood cancer and, they kept telling us that first week, one of the most curable. He has been in remission since the end of September. Now he's in maintenance: a pill every night, another every week, a visit to the clinic every month, and about two more years of that before they call it done.

This summer he played Little League. I started this journal because I needed somewhere to put it all that wasn't the kitchen table at two in the morning. Turns out this is also the kitchen table at two in the morning. But it helps.

Entries: Sept 26 • Sept 23 • Sept 20 • Sept 18 • Sept 7 • Sept 2 • Aug 17 • Aug 3

Last night the harvest moon came up huge and orange over the neighbors' garage, and Dave and I sat on the back steps with a blanket and watched it, and neither one of us said the word "counts" or "fever" or "insurance" for an entire hour. I'm writing that down because I want proof it happened.

This afternoon Caleb talked his dad into playing catch in the yard. The ear's better, the antibiotics are almost done, and he has that fuzz on his head now that looks like a duckling. He throws harder than he did in June. Dave pretends it stings. Caleb loves that. I stood at the kitchen window doing dishes I'd already done so I could keep watching.

Hannah came and stood next to me and said, "You're doing the thing where you watch him breathe." I said I'm doing dishes. She said, "Mom. Those are clean." Thirteen. Nothing gets past her. I pulled her in for a hug and she let me, for almost three seconds, which is a record for this month.

I'm learning to breathe again. Out, and then in. It's slower than they tell you.

Day 361 in remission. Listening to: Caleb and Hannah arguing over the radio. Shania won.

Tyler finished treatment. Tyler is 12 and was two rooms down from Caleb for most of last fall, and his mom Sue and I have logged probably a hundred hours in the family lounge with that awful coffee. Today the clinic had a little party for him in the playroom. The nurses made a sign: NO MORE POKES! There was a sheet cake. Tyler rang a cowbell somebody brought and every kid in the waiting room cheered, even the little ones who didn't know what for.

I cried, obviously. Sue cried. Gary, Tyler's dad, who never cries, went and stood in the hall for a while.

Here is the ugly part, and I'm putting it here because this is where I put the ugly parts: I was so happy for them, and underneath it I was counting. Two more years. I did the math in the parking ramp on the back of a gas receipt. Then I felt terrible. Then I called Sue from home and told her I was so proud of Tyler, which was also true.

Rhonda was there too, with Lexie, who's four and just starting. Lexie's mom has that look we all had in the first month, like someone who's been handed a manual in another language. I gave her my phone number and the name of the nurse who's best with the little ones. That's how it works in our hospital family. Somebody did it for me.

Home. Blood cultures negative at forty-eight hours. It was an ear infection. An ordinary, garden-variety, every-kid-gets-one ear infection. The kind of thing that, two years ago, I'd have handled with the pink stuff from the pharmacy and a day home from school.

Caleb's main complaint is that he missed his fall ball game Saturday. His second complaint is the hospital's macaroni and cheese. I told him both were noted.

Dave slept in the vinyl chair next to the bed both nights. He's six-foot-two. He had to fold himself up like a lawn chair. I told him to go home and sleep and he said no, flat, so I went home Saturday afternoon to get Hannah and a shower, and when I came back he was reading Caleb the sports page, both of them in the bed, the IV pole parked at the foot like a third guy.

Last winter we almost didn't make it, Dave and me. I don't mean anybody packed a bag. I mean we stopped talking about anything but blood counts and bills, and one night in February he said "I don't know how to do this" and I said "Nobody asked you if you knew how," and it was bad for a while. We went and talked to Pastor Jim, twice. It helped some. What's helped more is nights like these. He brought my glasses and Caleb's blue blanket to the ER Friday without me asking. After nineteen years, that's what love looks like at midnight.

(Written in pencil on the back of a hospital menu. Typed in Monday.)

Last night at 11:20 Caleb came into our room and said "My ear hurts," and he was warm. I knew before the thermometer beeped. 101.4.

The rule for kids on chemo is simple and you learn it the first week: 101 or higher, you call the oncology number, day or night, no waiting to see. So I called. The doctor on call said bring him in. We had the bag packed; we always have the bag packed. Hannah went next door to the Postmas' in her pajamas, and we drove downtown with the streets empty and every light green, which almost made me laugh.

The ER knows us. They accessed his port, drew counts and cultures, and had antibiotics running inside an hour. His counts were all right, which is the big thing. It means his body has something to fight with. They're keeping him forty-eight hours anyway, to watch the cultures. That's the protocol and I'm grateful for the protocol.

He's asleep now. Dave is asleep in the chair. I'm awake, the way I'm always awake. I keep thinking: we were doing so well. We ARE doing so well. This is what doing well looks like sometimes.

First day of fifth grade. Caleb wore his Little League cap to school even though caps aren't allowed, because I wrote the teacher a note. My annual letter: he's in treatment, he may be tired, he'll miss a day a month for clinic, and please, please call me the minute anybody in the class has chicken pox, because for him chicken pox is not a week of oatmeal baths, it's a trip downtown.

His teacher called me at lunch. Not about chicken pox. She wanted me to know she had a nephew who went through ALL in the '80s and is married now with a baby. She didn't have to call. I sat in the car in the grocery store lot and couldn't go in for ten minutes.

Hannah started eighth grade. She didn't want a picture on the porch. I took one anyway. She's the one who gets forgotten in all this and she knows it and she's too kind to say it. Tonight I took her for ice cream, just her. She got mint chip and told me all about a boy in her science class who she says is "so annoying." We'll see.

One year today.

A year ago he'd been pale for a couple of weeks and had bruises on his shins that I blamed on baseball, and he was so tired that he fell asleep on the couch at four in the afternoon with his cleats on. I thought he had mono. I took him in on a Wednesday. Our pediatrician looked at the blood test and then came back in the room and sat down, and she had never sat down before. That's when I knew. Before she said anything, I knew from the chair.

By that night we were at the children's hospital downtown and there were words I had never said out loud. Oncology. Port. Induction.

Today was nothing. That's what I want to say. Today Caleb took his pills, went to the pool for the last day before it closes, came home sunburned on his nose, and asked for tacos. I made tacos. Dave came home with a pie from the bakery on 28th Street and didn't say why, and he didn't have to.

I wanted to write something wise here. I don't have anything wise. I have tacos, and a sunburned nose, and a boy asleep upstairs.

Day 337 in remission.

Clinic day. For anybody new who found this page, a clinic day in maintenance goes like this: numbing cream on the port at 7 a.m. under a square of plastic wrap, drive downtown, wait, weigh in, wait, Nurse Bonnie accesses the port ("Big breath, bud"), blood goes to the lab, wait, the counts come back, Dr. Mike looks them over, and if the numbers are right he gets his vincristine and we go home with five days of steroids.

Numbers were right. His ANC was 1,100, right where Dr. Mike likes it in maintenance, not too high and not too low. They nudged his nightly 6-MP up a little. Every night at bedtime, empty stomach, no milk. Methotrexate on Thursdays. Bactrim on weekends. I have it all on a chart on the refrigerator with a highlighter, and Caleb checks the boxes himself now. He's proud of that chart. So am I.

Steroid week, though. Tonight at 10 p.m. he ate three grilled cheese sandwiches and then cried because the batteries in his Game Boy died. Dave says steroid week Caleb is a very small, very hungry, very emotional old man. It's true. Four more days.

End-of-season team party tonight at the pizza place. Twelve boys, three pitchers of pop, and so many tokens for the games in the back that I'm pretty sure Coach Jim spent his own money.

Back in April, I didn't think Caleb would play at all. He'd just come out of the hardest part of treatment and didn't have a hair on his head. I asked Dr. Mike about baseball and started in on the port, and getting hit by a pitch, and the dirt, and he let me finish and then he said, "Terri. Let him play." So he played.

First game in June he wore a thin blue skull cap under his batting helmet so it wouldn't slide around. One of the other team's boys pointed. Our shortstop, Nate, who I had never heard say two words, walked over and said something to him, and that was the end of the pointing. I still don't know what he said. I've decided I don't need to know.

Caleb played second base. He batted eighth. He got four hits all season and I can tell you about every one. The last one, in July, was a line drive over the first baseman's head, and he stood on first and took off his helmet and there was the cap, and the whole bleachers stood up. Not just our side.

Tonight Coach Jim gave out the trophies, and then he gave one more, a little one, "for Heart," to Caleb. Caleb said "Thanks, Coach," very cool, and then he sat down next to me and didn't let go of it the whole way home. It's on his nightstand next to the pill chart.

Day 307 in remission. Caleb's car song all summer: Smash Mouth, "All Star." Every. Single. Time.