heinz family

Written July 25, 2006

Alice turned 13 on Wednesday – July 19th. It is nearly impossible for me to tell you how truly amazing this is, and how incredibly blessed I feel to be able to say, I am the mother of two teenagers.
I have always been an optimist, but there have been so many difficulties along the path in the last 7 years that I never really thought she’d get to be 13. It is truly nothing short of miraculous.

And a wonderful birthday it was. We surprised her with a party at the clubhouse in my mother’s retirement community. It was a total surprise and that was lovely. We also surprised her by painting her bedroom while she was out for the day (and we actually got it done!! Thank you Laura for helping Evelyn and I). And we gave her a wonderful scrapbook filled with messages from many of you. Evelyn worked so hard at putting it together. It is an amazing book filled with love and memories and good wishes. Thank you to all who shared messages – and for all of you who we know love and care for us.

So after Alice’s birthday an interesting event occurred. On Friday (7/21/06), a long lost friend of mine from high school – Joanne - who I haven’t seen in 22 years decided to take a trip to visit with her 15 year old daughter, Samantha, who I’ve never met. Evelyn and I drove to Eugene to pick her up at the airport in Eugene and had an accident with the car. We are fine!!! We were incredibly lucky – the car (my new Honda) was not as lucky. But we were totally OK. There was no one else in the car, there were no other cars involved, and we walked away unharmed. We feel incredibly fortunate that no one was injured. It was a reminder of the unpredictability of life.

We had to have the car towed back to an auto body shop in Corvallis and John came down to pick us all up and get my friends from the airport. After we got home my friend said, “I’m amazed how calm you are about the car getting smashed up. In my house this would be a big deal”. I thought about this and realized that in the big picture of life, this was truly no big deal. I thought of all the scenarios and possible outcomes and destroying my car seems like no big deal. We could have hit a post in the ditch, there could have been a car coming in the opposite direction, we could have already picked up our friends and had more people in car … the list goes on and on. I think talking to my friend and seeing her amazement at our calm over wrecking the car made me realize that after many of our life experiences and worrying about the big life and death stuff, wrecking a car is no big deal. Unfortunately it was Evelyn driving, and it was scary, ... but we all keep learning in this life.

So let’s here is for survival. Alice is 13 years old, 5 plus months out from her surgery, and healthier than she has been for years. Evelyn and I got through our first ever big auto accident and walked away unharmed. And John was amazingly calm, supportive, and understanding, and we all realized how lucky we really are. (And we had a lovely visit with a long lost friend).

Birthdays, car crashes, and survival. It’s been a great week.

Love and peace to all.
Susan