What do three families stuck in a children’s hospital – let alone the oncology floor – do on Thanksgiving Day?

Throw a parade, of course.

At precisely 1:51 p.m., patients, brothers, sisters, moms, dads, nurses, doctors and friends stepped off on Three East at A.I. du Pont Hospital for Children/Nemours for the inaugural Thanksgiving Day Parade. Balloons, remote control cars, silly string, bubbles, marching band music, signs and even a red wagon float generated lots of laughter and revelry on what otherwise would’ve been a boring afternoon.  We all laughed as we meandered back and forth in disorderly fashion down the hallway.

For me this parade brought a lot of celebration and levity and even tradition on what isn’t an easy day to be away from home. Tradition is a big thing for me.   I’m used to being in the kitchen cooking all morning to prepare for the big feast with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on the TV in the background. I love greeting family at my door as they come for dinner. And of course dinner, dessert, wine and football make me so happy.

These past two years my family has gotten used to having to abandon tradition. A year ago, the four of us celebrated quietly at a restaurant as Nate recuperated from open-heart surgery. This year, we have leukemia to contend with. Today we can’t even all be together.   Unfortunately Sam can’t come to the hospital today because he’s not feeling well so Ted is home taking care of him.

Thankfully my dear friend Jenn traveled all the way from Boston to be with us today so I’ve had great company all morning. She’s also the best partner in crime I know.  She was the perfect person to help me get this parade started.  We also are blessed to have two other wonderful families staying on Three East with us this Thanksgiving.  They share our sense of humor.

As it turns out, the Griffiths have so much to be thankful for  — we have each other, a wonderful extended family, the dearest of friends (old and new), the best medical providers and a pretty great life.

I used to dread homework.

Not mine.  Sam’s.

It was a battle every night.  It took the entire first grade and some work over the summer for Sam and I to learn how to work together.  I stopped hovering as much and he matured such that — on most nights — Sam completed his work without either one of us throwing a tantrum.

Given that homework can be an ordeal, this may sound strange: not helping Sam with homework ranks high on my list of things I hate most about Nate’s cancer.  To me it epitomizes how cancer is a family disease.  Homework time kept me up to date on what Sam was learning, gave us something to talk about and helped me develop better parenting skills.

Fortunately Ted and those helping us care for Sam are making sure he gets his homework done.

But I feel cheated and miss the time we spent together.  It hit me Thursday, the night before Sam’s weekly spelling test.  On our nightly call, I asked Sam to spell one of his words for the week.  Before I knew it, Sam was proudly rattling off the entire list to me.  I so wanted to be at home to see the expression on his face as he figured his words out.

Nate and I were discharged Friday after a short admission and spent the weekend at home, returning to the hospital Tuesday morning.  This admission, we are told, is supposed to be the most difficult.  It could be four more weeks before we return home.

Today I had enough of missing out on afternoons with Sam so I picked him up from school and brought him to the hospital.  We finished the homework between lots of snack breaks and video games on Nate’s TV.

The best part of the afternoon was when Sam opened up his book bag and showed me the books he chose at school to read for the week.  In addition to Frog & Toad, Sam picked the first in the Nate the Great detective series by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat.

Sam had fun reading to Nate his brother how Nate the sleuth tries to crack the case of his friend’s missing picture.  I can’t wait until he reads us the next one in the series, but it may be awhile.