For Peet’s Sake
August 6, 2009
In spite of this week’s Slate article “Who Makes the Best Coffee?” I’m not buying it that Starbucks ranked last behind McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts…. With all due respect to my Boston extended family, I’ve had some unbelievably bad Dunkin cups of coffee, at the airport and mostly at my in-laws lake house (which usually involve the father in law making the pot).
I will always declare my undying love for my SBUX triple tall, but….since i’m staying at the Ritz this week, I’m going to treat myself this morning to its coffee partner of choice, which blows all three of the above out of the water…Peet’s Coffee.
Excuse me while I head down to the espresso bar..
Alive
August 1, 2009
It’s pretty tough to write a blog post on something as sobering as cancer while listening to the Black Eyed Peas “Alive”….BIDIA (But I’ll do it anyway), as I document what’s going on in our family on my mother’s side.
Thought her ovaries are now gone, thanks to a scheduled hysterectomy, my mother has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and will begin chemo in three weeks. My aunt Marti was diagnosed earlier this year with a form of abdominal cancer. And my aunt Eva was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year about this time…All of these different forms, each of these various stages and all discovered in different ways. Not since my Aunt Mim’s illness and death roughly 6 years ago has something like this hit our family so directly, yet never so frequently.
Siegrist blood runs through us...Mom, Mia, Marti and me
Genetics? Environmental? As of now, we don’t know. We’ve asked all the questions and will continue to ask more as my mom’s, my aunts’, and perhaps even my own path unfolds. We’ll study the disease, meet with the specialists at Johns Hopkins Ovarian Cancer Center, pray for healing — for all 3 women I mention, and seek peace amidst suffering.
The only thing I know for sure right now is that grace can sustain these women, all followers of Christ, all deeply loved not only by us (their family), but by the Creator of the Universe. My friend Sara Sicks, who wrote so beautifully and honestly on suffering last year as she was going through chemo for breast cancer, has summed it up in one of her posts…she says, “It is through the crucible of suffering that we can change and slowly become more beautiful ….. May God have his way with us so that we turn into the people we were meant to be, people who are joyful and satisfied with our place in God’s family (we are his beloved!).”
May we truly feel ALIVE… Indeed, ” I’ve got so much love….I’ve got so much love..”