Today is a day that will go down...not in infamy, but in one of my happiest of memories.  I went to see my oncologist and she told me I could come off Tamoxifen--the cure that kills you in the process.  Hallelujah!!  It has been eight years post chemo and post radiation.   Eight years of horrible drugs with horrible side effects.  I wouldn't wish chemo on a dog.  No recurrence.  Thank God; I am alive and doing well by His grace.  Breast cancer is an epidemic, one in four women will have this disease. 

Which reminds me of a story my mom told me.  She was the fourth child in her family and her older siblings informed her that one in four people born in the world was Chinese.  And since she was the fourth child in their family, that she was Chinese.  She was only six or seven at the time, and she was devastated that she wasn't an American like they were.  She said she cried and cried.

On the way to Tulsa for my appointment, Becky and I were discussing people that made lasting impressions on us.  She said that when we moved to Pryor in the middle of the school year, (when Ken went to Viet Nam), she was in the second grade.  And they put her in a desk behind a boy named John.  She said she was pretty dumb-struck by his hair.  "He was Indian and had lots and lots of black hair."  She had never seen a boy with hair.  All the men in her life up to then had been Marines.  With high and tight cuts.  Wives cut their hair, and almost all sons as well had a high and tight.

And when she was in the fourth grade she had a teacher that was really scary.  On the first day the teacher stomped in and wrote "Discipline" on the board, then turned around and very sternly informed them that if they didn't have discipline that they would never amount to anything.  Becky said, "I didn't know what that was, but knew I better get some in a hurry."

It is funny the things we remember.  Becky said that she didn't remember a single thing from that fourth grade year but that first day and the word "discipline."  I guess that was enough.