Unchosen mendicant

 By Easter of 2008, Adrianne shouldn't have been breathing…The other children at St.James were running  around searching for eggs screaming, yelling doing the fun activities that children do. While fighting over who saw the egg first. Adrianne was not playing. Adrianne was sleeping on my lap, sometimes looking up only to go back to sleep, like a newborn. My life was FLASHING before my eyes. Adrianne was going. She’s leaving us. I was ignoring the signs. We were settled in Great Barrington, Jason caretaking property on Mount Washington. We rented an in-law apartment set up an air mattress that would be deflated by the time we woke up. We came back from the west coast to be “normal”. Only to discover “normal’ is a cycle on the dishwasher. Synclair was 2 1/2 and I was pregnant with Abegayle. Three little ones and one on the way. Adrianne was five. We walked everywhere, even in the dead of the winter. It does stay incredibly cold in the winters, Berkshire winters are what they are. We were young and adaptable. Taking the gift of time and health for granted. Jason was getting really skinny from all the labor and riding his bike up and down the mountain. Expect of course if it was snowing.Then walking was the only way up…Adrianne was taking ballet lessons at the local community center. She would wake up in the morning, throw up stomach acid after complaining of a headache. After puking she would continue on with her day. Meanwhile the cancer was rapidly out of control…Adrianne started to lose her balance. She was dizzy all the time. After the pediatrician misdiagnosed Adrianne for six months, “they” told us they would save her. It was like making a deal with the Devil. “They” were Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana-Fabre Cancer Institute. “They” saved her.

              We didn’t wake up one day saying let’s be “affluent beggars” but we certainly wanted to get away from Jennifer’s (the mom of Seth’s classmate, someone I was naive enough to trust)Affluent Beggars article written about us in Ashland Oregon. We poured our hearts out for hours upon hours which then only turned into a cheap, tabloid style article focusing on how one Ash Wednesday in Santa Barbara we raised eight hundred dollars. I talked to people on that warm solemn day for twelve hours!!! We never chose to be “homeless” it was a circumstance that others chose for us. There is no turning back now!!!