Now that Quinn's started school again, she's ready to follow.
I should clarify: I know this preschool well. Quinn went there three days a week for two and a half years. We still meet up regularly for Taco Tuesdays -- or lately, Brat Haus Tuesdays -- with the families we met there. The school was a magical sanctuary for Quinn (and me) when I was no longer working but still sick and lethargic from chemo.
Four years ago yesterday -- thanks, Facebook memories
But I wanted to see what Noelle might think. She is almost two -- how in the name of all things holy did that happen? -- and certainly ready for more interactions with people her own size. She picked out her favorite pair of shoes for the trip -- pink cowgirl boots handed down from a friend's daughter.
Walking around the school, seeing the now small-looking playground and the familiar, eclectic classrooms filled with reading nooks and wooden play kitchens, terrariums housing lizards and trays filled with dried beans, pictures of current students and their families on the walls, I stopped in my tracks more than once to catch my breath. I remembered Quinn exploring here. Outside, swinging on those little swings, climbing that upside-down colander / spider web jungle gym and how it terrified me the first time I saw it. Learning to swing on the monkey bars, discovering what happens when ice castles melt and reveal treasures frozen inside, running to jump into my arms at the end of the day, muddy and barefoot and excited with his whole body to tell me about feeding lettuce to the chickens.
A full movie montage ran through my head and I choked away tears.
I hadn't expected that onslaught. As I mentioned, I've been a little emotionally raw lately.
Time is wild. I distinctly remember dropping Quinn off when he was two and a half and sobbing in my car afterward, then writing about how my love would always be with him, while I wondered whether he'd remember me. We ran into one of his early teachers at Target the other day, and she gave me a big hug. When we left, Quinn asked me who she was and I felt a pang in my heart that he didn't remember her. That he might not have remembered me.
Today, it has been eight years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And it still boggles my mind how time twists and turns and seems to fold in on itself. How I can still feel the tendrils of fear that crawled up my neck after I heard the words, "This is cancer," and I felt frozen, like time had stopped. How eight years can pass in a blink, but August in Phoenix seems to crawl and 110+ degree temps seem to hang on for eternity. How grief can come in waves -- over lost body parts, lost friends, a lost sense of security about what it means to occupy space in this world. They say time heals everything, but I'm not sure that's true.
Stay with me. I don't mean to be grim.
Recently, I was talking with a friend about grief and the idea that it may always be in your life after cancer (or any other loss), but that over time, grief does not sit alone in that space. It doesn't disappear so much as move to the side to allow room for other experiences. Eventually, it is no longer the heaviest tome on the shelf.
I saw this post over the weekend and it resonates so strongly today.
Eight years, and not a single day has gone by that I haven't thought of cancer. But there is room for more than just my grief now. There is room for pink cowboy boots and a little girl who has no fear of anything in this world. For new beginnings that I get to be here to witness. I'll take that win.
As I think I say everyyear, the passage of time is so strange. It’s now been more than a year -- since about a week before you turned five -- since my last chemo infusion, and I realize with an odd sadness that you may never remember how sick I once was. Will you recall how often we snuggled on the couch watching movies in the days after my infusions? Will you know how often I fell asleep with you at night after tucking you in because the steroids had worn off and I couldn’t keep my eyes open past 8 o’clock, and how the warmth and heft of your little body rooted me solidly to this world when I wasn’t sure how much more I could take? Do you know how powerful your love is?
And here we are, cancer and the fear it brought to our lives not such a tremendous cornerstone anymore. Do you feel the shift?
It has been a year of tremendous adjustments for all of us. 2016 brought some earthquakes to our world, but here we are, still standing. Watching the dust settle. Exhaling. Finding our footing on new ground.
You started kindergarten and have learned to really read this year: all of the signs along the road as we’re driving, and books to me at night, which still makes me tear up with pride and astonishment that I’m here to see this unfold.
You're riding your bike (without training wheels) to our neighbors' house to see if they can play for the entire afternoon, as you should be. You want to be a ninja and a policeman and an astronaut. You played your first season of flag football as a Seahawk, much to your dad’s chagrin. You are interested in trying everything -- though still wary of most vegetables. Karate, rock climbing, ice skating, Lego club, Spanish, your school’s Variety Show, skiing. We have always loved your zest for life.
Still, I have to reign you in a bit because, truthfully, I miss you.
You are six, and underwear jokes are funny. "Mom! Look under there!" you exclaim. And if I'm caught off guard (or playing along), I'll respond, "Under where?" which makes you giggle every time. "Haha -- gotcha!" you say. You make up games constantly: let's pretend the floor is hot lava; let’s play the “weird word” game in the car, where you make up a word and try to guess how it's spelled; here’s a game called Toyota collect, where we have to count the Toyotas we pass; this one's called shark attack, and we yell "shark attack" when we see a yellow car; let’s find the colors of the rainbow in order as we drive (purple is always the hardest); now 20 questions or “I spy.” Your creativity and boundless energy astound me.
You’ve lost two teeth and have been visited by the tooth fairy. She leaves you tiny notes reminding you not to eat too much sugar, that you have to take care of your adult teeth now because these are it for the rest of your life. Around the corner is Easter, and with it the Easter bunny, and you've started asking questions about what Easter means, and why in the world eggs and bunnies would have anything to do with Jesus rising from the dead. Rebirth, I try to explain.
Please stay here just a bit longer, in this time and place where you still run to greet me at the end of the school day, where you love and marvel at mud puddles, and still choose a favorite stuffed animal as your show-and-tell item when it's your week to be Star Student.
Six means one-third of the way to eighteen, and I’m not close to ready for it. Time is short, even when you've been given the miracle of more of it. But I can’t write this without acknowledging how flipping lucky I am to be here for any of it. I think I am the luckiest mom who ever was.
The other day you asked me what an angel was, and I tried to explain that some people believe they're spirits who watch over and protect us. You looked promptly at me and said, "Mommy, you're my angel!" And just when I didn't think my heart could melt any more, you said, "And I'm yours." Yes, love, yes you are. You always have been.
Twenty years ago, in August of 1996, I was a 17-year-old girl about to start college. I had just flown across the country from Seattle to Baltimore, Maryland, by myself. My parents and I had said our tearful good-byes at the gate at SeaTac (back when you could still walk people to their gates at airports). I'd get picked up at BWI by upperclassmen on the welcoming committee. There were about four of us who rode nervously in the university-issued van to campus, our new home.
I moved into an un-air-conditioned, stifling dorm room at Johns Hopkins University, all of my worldly possessions in a large suitcase, plus a box or two I'd receive from home in the next couple of weeks. I had my rolls of quarters for laundry and phone calls home, my shower tote for carting my toiletries to and from the shared bathroom, and the weird extra-long twin sheets made specifically to fit those narrow dorm room beds. I just needed to go buy a box fan to deal with those last few weeks of swampy mid-Atlantic summer.
That first week is kind of a blur of freshman orientation activities like figuring out who has your same area code, if anyone, and things like finding the financial aid office for a check so I could buy books. And then I started a work-study job at the campus bookstore, so I got to see what classes everyone else was taking, too. The bookstore was mercifully air-conditioned, and in a basement, so I was happy to spend time there, even if I was only making $5.25 an hour.
At some formal my freshman year. LOOK HOW YOUNG!
***
Fifteen years ago, I was a college graduate living on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and working as a lobbyist. It was late summer 2001.
I was also training for my first marathon. My marathon training team would meet early on Saturday mornings to run along the historic C&O canal path past Georgetown, into the shaded woods in Maryland, through old tunnels, for miles and miles. It was muggy, but the conversation was good and the cause was worthy. I had joined the AIDS Marathon Training Program to raise money for DC's Whitman Walker Clinic, at the time the largest service provider for AIDS patients in the District. My marathon would be at the end of October in Dublin, Ireland.
Prior to security barricades and guards everywhere, ca. 2001
Then September 11th happened. I was at a client office in Northern Virginia that brisk, beautiful morning, listening to a presentation on systems security when everyone's phones and Blackberries started buzzing. How rude, I thought. But then the whispers made their way to the podium and the speaker stopped speaking. "A plane hit the World Trade Center," a colleague said to me, quietly. I had been in the World Trade Center the weekend before. We all gathered around a TV in the conference room to watch the news coverage, wondering what the hell had just happened in New York. It looked like footage out of a movie. This can't possibly be real, I remember thinking. And then the Pentagon was hit. 9:37 a.m. It suddenly became crystal clear we were under attack.
I was able to reach my boss, who said they were closing the city. She asked whether I had a place to stay. I called a college friend who lived in Gaithersburg, Maryland, outside the beltway. I could crash with her until the city opened again and I could get back to my apartment. We drank cheap wine and cried about the new world we were living in.
Two days later was my twenty-third birthday. I didn't much feel like celebrating.
But I did get on a mostly empty plane the next month and I ran that marathon in Ireland.
Proof.
***
Ten years ago, I was just returning from studying abroad in South America. I had finished my first year of law school and had taken the opportunity to spend six weeks in Santiago, Chile (where I spent much of the time sick with what was probably a bronchial infection) and Buenos Aires (where, recovered from my mystery illness, I ate my weight in grass-fed beef and red wine).
Chris and I had been dating about a year by then. Our schedules were equally crazy. I'd taken leave from work to go to South America, but was back at my job and school that August. He was frantically trying to finish his dissertation and typing away in his office at the Smithsonian most nights until the last bus came by, sometime around 1:30 in the morning. We saw each other on the weekends, where we'd rehash our weeks over runs through the zoo or beers in Adams Morgan. Or both, if we were feeling ambitious.
I was exhausted, but who cares when you're twenty-seven and in love?
In 2008, I graduated law school, followed Chris to Arizona, took and passed the bar here, and planned our wedding. We got married that fall, so broke it felt like we were in college again, but we had each other. And at least one of us (not me) had a job.
***
A little more than five years ago, Quinn was born. I'd settled into a job with a great team, Chris and I had purchased our first home (a tiny thing built in the 1950s), and Arizona was even growing on me. Life was so good.
Then on August 19, 2011, I went in for an exam with a breast surgeon who asked me to go to radiology right away. I still remember what I was wearing, a cute belted smock, navy with white flowers. I later threw it away. The radiologist took one look at my ultrasound pictures and told me she was 99% sure this was cancer.
Time seems to stand still at moments like this. I'll never forget where I was for 9/11, or what it felt like those first few days away from home at college. I'll always remember the prickly tentacles of fear that crept up the back of my neck when I was told I had cancer that Friday afternoon five years ago.
I wouldn't learn until later how aggressive or extensive it was, but I knew my lump was large. I'd thought it was an infection from breast-feeding. I was shattered to learn how wrong I was.
Five years later, I'm still here. A woman in my workout class this morning said, "Oh, congratulations! Five years is when your risk for recurrence goes way, way down, isn't it?" She was so excited, I hated to burst her bubble. But I chose honesty.
"No, it's just when they stop tracking us," I said.
She looked crestfallen. "Oh," she said.
"But it still feels like a milestone," I added, throwing her a bone. But also because it's true. It does feel like a milestone some days, like a rock in my throat on others.
Quinn is finishing his second week of kindergarten today. Chris just started teaching a new semester at ASU. I don't often know how to celebrate this day, or whether it's appropriate for a cancerversary. I mean, it was a terrible day of our lives, but then, look how far we've come. A lot of times I give the day a moment of silence and move on, but I think five years deserves something. Ice cream and a movie is sounding spot-on.
I realize I've been away from here for awhile. That I've taken my annual summer vacation, and then some. I've missed you guys, but my words have not been working. As one blogger put it, "when I can't write everything, I somehow can't write anything." And no, before you even wonder, Chris and I are not getting a divorce (like the blogger I quoted). But there has been some stuff going on that I haven't been ready to write about. I've had what you might call a needle-scratching-across-the-record moment, and I've had to regain my bearings and catch my breath. I'm still trying to find my voice again.
I considered writing a whole post about going to my 20-year high-school reunion in July, which if you'd asked me last summer I would've said optimistically I'd be here to attend, but truthfully, I wasn't so sure. Not in the I'm-not-sure-I-want-to-do-one-of-those-things kinds of ways, because I get reunions are not everyone's jam, but in the I-might-be-dead kind of way. And then here it was, and there I was doing the small (and not-so-small) talk. I reconnected with old friends and wondered why we'd lost touch. Later, after we'd left the party, I sobbed with my oldest girlfriend because it was monumental. Because we've been through so much these past five twenty-two years.
Five years.
This summer has felt like I'm on the edge of a precipice. It could be the aura of magic and mystery I've superstitiously (stupidly?) placed on my five-year cancerversary coming up later this month, like it's some sort of expiration date for cancer, even though I know CANCER DOESN'T FOLLOW THE RULES. I am lucky as a leprechaun that I get to be here to wrestle with my emotions about this date again this year. Do I pop champagne to mark the anniversary of one of the worst days of my life? Write a letter to my younger self about what I wish I'd known? I will probably take a yoga class and cry in child's pose.
When I was diagnosed, the statistics said I had a 20% chance to make it to five years.
TWENTY PERCENT.
I am grateful, above all else. But there is also a healthy (and really, that's questionable) mix of fear and guilt as well. Every day another friend writes of the pain she's in, or has to have a port placed on her BRAIN to deliver chemo directly to it, or has to have her liver biopsied to see whether her cancer has jumped the fucking shark. Or died. This weekend, I learned of another friend who lost her life to metastatic breast cancer. And a fellow participant in the Story Half Told project has entered hospice. This is my tribe, and I want them all to be as lucky as I've been. But that is just not the way it goes with cancer.
My therapist has suggested I give myself a break this month, that I take it easy while my brain's emotion centers do a lot of processing. Except writing is kind of how I process, so here I am.
Even bigger than 5 years of cancer is the fact that Quinn started kindergarten today.
KINDERGARTEN.
How's that for a precipice? I can't even look at my sweet child without tears welling up in my eyes lately. How incredibly fortunate am I, that I was able to shop for new clothes and school supplies with him, that I could relish in those last few days of summer with my favorite person, that I held his hand at meet-the-teacher day and helped him locate his cubby? So fortunate. So emotional.
In fact, these emotions are too big to contain. They are spilling right down my cheeks as we speak.
As I tucked him into bed last night, I felt a strange knocking in my chest and throat, like my heart was actively trying to escape my chest through my neck. I audibly sobbed as I choked on it, and Quinn wordlessly handed me his current favorite stuffed animal to comfort me. Quinn lay across me, with his head on my belly. I held his foot in my hands, measured it against my palm and wondered how the last fiveyearshavepassedin a blink.
A photo posted by Jen Campisano (@jencampisano) on
For so much of his life, I wasn't sure I would be here for this. I've spent so long preparing for the worst, and hoping down to the core of my being for a chance at the best. Driving last week, as Quinn played a game on my phone and giggled in the backseat, I listened to Damien Rice singing Leonard Cohen's iconic song. Suddenly I understood exactly what it meant for something to be a cold and broken Hallelujah.
I don't remember who said it, but there's a quote about how children will break your heart, just by the simple act of growing up. And it's glorious, but, oh, how it aches. Still, for now at least, I get to be here for the best of it. How lucky am I?
How has it been a year since I wrote the last one of these? How are you FIVE? Time is a funny thing, isn't it? A couple of weeks ago, on the way to school, you asked me what makes today a new day. I explained that the earth rotated one full turn, that every morning is a brand new day.
"But what makes it different?" you wanted to know, after you figured out that we're always spinning in space -- too slowly to feel, too quickly now that I'm a mom.
"Today we get to choose to be awesome!" I said, apparently having gotten a good night's sleep the night before and doubled up on my morning coffee. "I'm going to try to be an even better mom to you. What are you going to try today?"
You said something ridiculously sweet, like, "You already ARE a good mommy!" Because that's who you are, how big your heart is.
A few days later, we heard this song on the radio about trying everything.
"How is that even possible? For one person to try everything? I don't get it! What does that even mean?" you said, your inflections slaying me. I basically want to carry around a recorder and catch your voice all the time lately. You talk almost incessantly around your dad and I, and I still can't get enough of it.
That morning, we talked about living an adventurous life, about exploring and traveling, about being open-minded. I don't think you'll have any problems in this regard (except maybe when it comes to trying new vegetables). I love seeing the world unfold through your eyes.
For weeks, I'd been filling out family information forms for kindergarten, with questions along the lines of "describe your parenting style" and "what are your child's strengths" and "list anything you would like to keep out of your child's early childhood experience."
I would say my parenting style varies between nurturing -- perhaps to a fault, if that's possible, because I've always loved you with the fear of cancer lurking in the background, wondering how long my luck could possibly hold, so I dote on you a bit -- and freaking out because we're running late yet again and no one can find their shoes or sunglasses and I forgot it's my day for snacks at preschool. I am not quite sure how we're going to get to kindergarten by 8:30 a.m. come August.
But I'm at the point where I can pretty confidently say I think I'll be here to see you start kindergarten (knock on wood), so I'm not really going to sweat it if we're a few minutes late the first week or if your socks don't match.
Your strengths are easy. You are creative, helpful, thoughtful, empathetic as they come, curious, adventurous. I ran out of space on these forms to say all the wonderful things about you. In one of my favorite birthday cards you received, a friend of yours wrote that what he loves about you is how funny you are, then included a story of you standing in front of a mirror at school, saying, "Why are you copying me?" Please don't ever lose your goofiness.
What do we want to keep out of your early childhood experience? Bullying. Violence. Meanness.
What I didn't write: cancer. I wish I could have kept that out, but no one asked me about that one. What goes without saying: death. I really don't want that to be part of your childhood any more than it already has been.
Two days after your birthday, the three of us boarded a plane to Kauai, where your grandparents had requested their ashes be spread. Our second day there, we found a guy who would take the three of us out on his boat to scatter the ashes in the Pacific. You wanted to know why Grandma and Grandpa wanted their ashes spread at sea, what it meant to be cremated, whether it hurt them, where their bodies are now, what happens to us when we die. "What is heaven?" you queried, the end of a long line of questions to which I have only vague answers. I may not have all the answers, but I love the richness of our conversations lately.
I am still scared for the day when you start asking more questions about cancer.
I write these letters to you as the time comes, to reflect on the last year. I don't write them in advance, and I haven't done one of those "cards for every potential occasion I might miss as you grow up" kinds of things. If I died tomorrow, this would be it: whatever I've written for youhere, plus snippets in your baby book. I haven't wanted to go down that "just in case" path. I've wanted to believe I'll be here to dance at your wedding instead.
But honestly, I wasn't really sure whether I'd be here for your fifth birthday when I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer four-and-a-half years ago. The statistics aren't great, but as your Grandpa Jim would have said, "Statistics don't mean a thing for the individual." You'll have to forgive me if I was a little emotional when you woke up last Sunday and found me in the kitchen drinking coffee and looking at baby photos of you. You declared, "I'm five!" and have said it intermittently over the last week. Riding your bike with no hands yesterday, you stepped it up with, "Being five is AWESOME!" because, obviously, no hands.
Four was pretty magical, too. My heart already aches at how much I'm going to miss our days together when you're in school full-time, busy with activities and friends and all the exciting growing-up stuff on your horizon. But the flip side is that my heart swells with gratitude and hope that I might be here for more and more of it. That you might get to know me like I know you.
A photo posted by Jen Campisano (@jencampisano) on
You question everything, want to see the proof. "Just trust me," or "because I said so," are never going to be enough for you. Some days it makes me batty, but at the same time I love your insatiable curiosity, your not being satisfied with the easy answer, your constant desire to hear the full truth.
I slipped and told you to keep track of your shit the other day, after you'd asked me for the gazillionth time where something of yours was. You stopped, because you knew somehow this was a word I shouldn't have said.
"What's 'shit'?" you asked, a half smile spreading across your face. "'Shit' is a funny word," you went on.
"It's a mommy word, and you shouldn't use it," I said.
"Tell me what it means, and I promise I won't say it," you bargained.
"It's basically poop," I said, hesitant. What had I gotten myself into?
You laughed, and looked at me funny. "Mom, you just told me to keep track of my poop!" Ha ha hahahahaha. Ha. Mommies are hilarious.
To your credit, you haven't repeated the word since (knock on more wood).
***
At night, when I'm tucking you in after we've read your three stories to you -- or lately, you reading to us! -- I tell you I love you more than anything. "I love you more," you say most of the time.
"I doubt it, but tell me how much," I say. I love to hear where your imagination goes.
"I love you to the end of space, past all the galaxies, times infinity," you say, "then back into your heart for you to keep forever." Then: "What's after space?" Of course.
"That's SO much!" I say. I wonder where you come up with this stuff. "I love you that much, too, buddy. And I don't know what comes after space. It's a mystery."
You ask me if I'll still love you when I'm dead. "I think a part of me will, even after I die." What do I know? Anything is possible. I hope that won't happen for a long, long time.
"I think so too. I'll miss you so much," you tell me. I try not to cry. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes not. And you lean in for a bear hug. You're so great at those, and I'm amazed at your strength.
Birthdays post-cancer are a funny thing. I mean, of course they're great and we want more of them, but being diagnosed with cancer doesn't mean you don't notice the lack of collagen as the years pass. Or get irritated by grey hairs you-know-where when another part of you remembers you should just be happy to have hair.
Cancer doesn't give you a free pass when it comes to being weirded out about all the things that happen as you get older. For example, I have what I thought was the makings of a pimple on my chin, but now I'm pretty sure is just an ingrown hair. On my chin. Why? WHY ARE HAIRS GROWING THERE BUT NOT ON MY EYEBROWS!!!
So, I'm ecstatic to have more birthdays but also not going to pretend I don't notice the fine lines around my eyes or the fact that I can't eat peanut butter straight out of the jar (sometimes with a spoon) without then having to get raised eyebrows from the nurse at my oncologist's office as he weighs me in and sees I've gained four pounds. Sigh. But also? I don't really care. Because you only live once, and sometimes peanut butter is worth it.
I'm talking about getting older because my 37th birthday was last weekend. Somehow, that makes FIVE birthdays since I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. SO, YES, I HAD A CUPCAKE. And a bourbon drink. What can I say? I celebrated.
I celebrated with friends and my husband who arranged a small gathering at a local...speakeasy? Hipster dive bar? There was skee ball and air hockey (at least I think. Us parents sat and visited the whole time. We were just happy to have a night of uninterrupted conversations. Even though, sure, ninety percent of those conversations were about our kids.)
We were clearly the early crowd, arriving at seven and ordering menu items like charcuterie and arugula flatbreads. Then around 9:30 things shifted, and we were easily the oldest, quietest, least collagen-ed people in the place. I vaguely remember a time when Chris and I used to leave to go out for the night around 10 p.m. (Here's photographic evidence.)
{circa 2006, celebrating Chris's 30th birthday}
But last weekend, we were home by 11, in bed shortly after, and I was still tired for two days because of it. And here's where I don't know whether to blame cancer treatments or aging or possibly even just being a parent to a little boy who wakes up ready to run and wrestle and do all of the things at seven a.m. But life is short, so why not do all of the things?
Here's to more birthdays and more doing and more celebrating (but maybe less peanut butter).
Quinn was five months old when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. At the time, the statistics I could find (when I dared to look) said about twenty percent of people with metastatic breast cancer would make it to the five-year mark. I couldn't help myself; I equated that statistic with me having a one in five chance of watching my son start kindergarten.
Kindergarten is still two years away. I am not there yet. But I am doing exceptionally well (knock on so much wood).
Quinn started preschool this week, after a short summer break and at the same school he's been attending since last October. School -- if you can call it that -- is not exactly new for him, but he has a new teacher with new friends to make. We bought him a new lunchbox, green with dinosaurs on it.
A lot of the moms of kids in Quinn's preschool are starting to chat about which school our kids will go to for kindergarten, and, slowly, I've found myself joining the conversation. I've spent the last couple of nights (crazy wild weekend here!) researching charter schools and open enrollment options for the public elementary schools in the districts next to ours. Although we love our house and neighborhood, we are nestled between two excellent public school districts. Ours, on the other hand, is just okay. I'm not sure I'm willing to accept "just okay" in a state with one of the worst public education systems in the country.
A lot can happen in two years. Cancer is a sneaky and unpredictable beast, and I still live in three-month increments. But as I was reading about different charter schools' philosophies late last night, it dawned on me that -- sure enough, statistics be damned -- I am starting to make actual, real-life plans to be here for Quinn's elementary school years. I am letting myself believe this could really happen.
We also bought Quinn a big boy bike this weekend. At REI, we couldn't get him off the darn thing. For at least half an hour, he wound his way expertly through tent displays and racks of clothing and the rock-climbing gear. He paused to check out the ropes hanging from the ceiling. "One sport at a time," I cautioned him as he tried to pull himself up by the carabiners.
And then I caution myself because I don't want to jinx anything: one milestone at a time.
