Today’s a milestone.

April 1, 2021. Today’s my Baby Nolan’s eighth birthday. I flew to San Jose last week to celebrate him. Who knew I’d ever have a grandson, much less one who was eight years old? Who knew I’d live this long?

Who knew I’d live to see him born?

The photo at the top of this post is me with my grandsons. Nolan is the big one on the right.

We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, Nolan?

In mid-July 2012, my son Zachary called to tell me he and Lesley had just found out she was pregnant. They had been together for years, and Zach was secretly plotting to propose during their once-in-a-lifetime trip to the London Olympics. My logical and practical science nerd kid was planning a romantic day off from the Olympic festivities, a train ride to Paris, and a proposal under the Eiffel Tower. He’s enlisted me and his sister to help him choose a ring and he was nervously planning how to hide it in his backpack and get it from Houston to Europe.

And then Lesley walked in early one morning to say she was pregnant. I think it took everything he had not to get on one knee at that moment.

Instead he waited. They flew to London and sent dispatches back about the games. The day in Paris came and he sent us a photo of him on one knee under the Eiffel Tower, Lesley’s face wild with joy.

And then we planned the wedding, a fun, simple but beautiful event in Austin in October, me thinking all the time about what a perfect fit they were for each other. And about having a grandchild on the way.

Me never knowing that I had a tumor growing in my colon and on my liver. Not knowing that I was bleeding to death internally.

My friend Bobbie Batley said once, “What a blessing that you didn’t know during Zach’s wedding!”

Instead I helped with flowers and cooked a rehearsal dinner and wore a great gossamer grey dress and danced all night at Uncle Billy’s. Drank a lot of champagne. Thinking all the time about the joy of the day and the joy of getting a grandchild in the mix.

It was a month and three days after this photo was taken that I lay in that hospital bed and heard Dr. L. say, “You have stage IV colon cancer.”

In that moment, in all my ignorance about what that meant, the brightest light at the end of the tunnel was the birth of my grandchild.

I knew I could get there. Nolan’s birth was the milestone I was determined to get to.

We called him Teddy Lonestar from the minute we knew the baby was a boy. One of Zach’s friends came up with it and it stuck. I even had a Pinterest board for Teddy Lonestar.

When Dr. C at told me in my first consult in Houston that I was a candidate for surgery and scheduled me for March 28, 2013, it felt like perfect timing. I could meet my new grandson and then head to MD Anderson for surgery.

Except that little Teddy Lonestar was determined to wait out his due date. And more. On our drive to Houston for the surgery, Johanna and I stopped in Dallas, where Zach and Lesley now lived. Part of our master plan was to help with the new baby.

Instead we played a lot of board games and watched Lesley for signs of labor. On March 26 we had to get in the car and drive to Houston for pre-op.

I had kept it in the back of my head all along that should I not survive surgery, I would at least have met my grandson before I died. I never talked to anyone about it, but that seemed to be my ace in the hole. If he could just get here before surgery, all would be well.

But you know babies. I was wheeled into surgery on a Thursday morning, no Teddy Lonestar in sight. During that first day while I sweated and cried through the pain, when I had to stand and walk and worry about the twelve-inch incision in my gut, I willed him to appear. On Easter Sunday when I pooped the bed (you’ll have to buy the book for the details), I prayed for my daughter-in-law.

When I threw up in the hallway leaving the hospital, crying because I was so afraid that puking would tear my staples out, I also thought of Lesley.

And the next day when I lay in the recliner in my dirty hotel room, tears running into my ears from the pain after my walk in the hallway, supported by Johanna and Glena, I prayed some more. While Lesley and Zach sweated out her labor in a Dallas hospital.

My surgeon had told me I couldn’t lift anything over ten pounds for eight weeks. On April 1, 2013, Nolan Archer Murphree appeared, a C-section baby weighing 9.9 ounces.

We had both made it under the wire.

So many things could have gone wrong.

Instead, here we both are, eight years later, celebrating about a thousand things. There’s his happy, thriving parents and his little brother Jake. There’s his cousin, Milo, the cutest almost eight-month baby in existence. There’s Toby, the great love I didn’t know was waiting for me at the end of my cancer journey. There’s the Cancer Foundation, where I give my energy on a daily basis to help other patients.

And there’s the book, Lifesaving Gratitude, that seems to be starting to touch more lives than I had thoughts possible.

And now there’s you, reading this blog, hopefully celebrating your own amazing milestones.

Webster’s defines milestone as “an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.”

We’re all different people than we were on April 1, 2013. What a gift this past eight years has been!

And where will we be in eight years?

What’s your milestone? What are you celebrating today?