SAVE THE DATE

Monday is my 28th birthday, but I really don't want to do anything to celebrate. The main and honest reason is that I'm just too busy with schoolwork this month and literally need every spare hour to study. I am usually a strict adherent to a balanced lifestyle, but for this June, I am foregoing that sagacity and just buckling down. I am taking intensive Chinese (one year of Mandarin in six weeks), Media and International Conflict, and Contemporary Economic Issues. With six hours of in-class lecture per day, I barely have time to do the reading, listening, flashcarding, sleeping, and eating necessary. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though: everything is done by June 29. This means that I have July and August to relax, take a trip to Cali, and devote some overdue time to creative writing.

There is another reason why I don't feel the desire at all to commemorate June 4th this year.

A lot of people around my age are getting engaged, married, having babies even. Me, I'm not lucky enough to claim any of those upcoming events. However, I have a different milestone coming up and I would seriously like you to SAVE THE DATE. At the end of March 2008, that's ten months from now (I suppose that's when people send out wedding Save the Date cards, right?), I will finish chemotherapy. As most of you know, the phase I'm in now is much more forgiving than the previous year's, but when I don't have to take cups of pills every day, visit the hospital every week, or feel weak and fatigued all the time won't really come until it's all over. Not to mention, upon the end of chemotherapy, that will mark two years since diagnosis, a nice hefty margin to put between me and cancer, with each day forward making relapse less likely.

Anyway, I figure birthdays are pretty commonplace, weddings/births and beginning LPC (life post-chemo) are not. At this point, I'm not sure what celebration will ensue, but since so many of my friends/family are strewn across this planet, I understand that some forethought and planning might have to go into your participation. A big party in San Francisco? A spa weekend in New Mexico? A long weekend camping in the sequoias? A vacation to Costa Rica/Tibet/Guam?

As far as the exact days I'm requesting of your life, if you're interested in this, consider the second half of May 08. Things should be nicely wrapped up with school and therapy. In fact, I'm sort-of considering that next May's commencement exercises to be my graduation because I'm hoping to go to Shanghai-based China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS) for my last semester and it will mark my final presence at Fletcher. I won't be able to walk, but I hope that I symbolically "graduate" from grad school with my friends then. I guess that adds one more reason to celebrate.

Bring. It. On.