It’s 9:00. The house is silent, except for the sounds of a basement sump on overdrive and two upper elementary cats chasing each other before I head upstairs to bed.

Normally, 5 miles would have been walked, dinner had and cleaned up, and a few minutes on the porch allowing my legs to rest before finishing my 30 flights of stairs.

But tonight, none of that happened. It’s chemo day, and chemo day has it’s own agenda.

So tonight, I needed my daddy. He isn’t here, and I could call him but it is 9:00. I have a rule. So the best way to need my daddy is to make Kraft Mac & cheese. We don’t keep boxed food on hand normally, but foster son changed that, so there was a box.

Dinner at 9:15 on a Wednesday night takes me back to childhood when it was past bedtime but Daddy came home from a long day of work and Mommy would let me get up and go sit at the kitchen table with Daddy and eat Mac & cheese, just the two of us.

I am grateful for that memory. I am grateful for a box in the pantry tonight. I am grateful for silence and funny cats. I am grateful chemo day is done and Sam is resting in bed.

And I am grateful for my Daddy…in Overland Park, and in my heart.