Sometimes I can feel the unwillingness inside me, just like a big lump in my stomach. In Finnish, it's "jaksaa"--officially described in the dictionary as "to have the intestinal fortitude to...." [pronounce it yahk-sah]

En jaksaa. I realized today that having children is helping me, in one specific way. Probably lots of ways, but one important way right now. They make me get out of bed and do things I don't want to do.

If I didn't have children, I would have stayed in bed all day today. Slept, or read escapist fiction sans people dying of cancer, or stared up at the ceiling and reminisced. I would not have had Reuben sit on my lap while eating breakfast, as he does daily, because I didn't jaksaa to actually eat anything. I would not have gotten dressed. I would most definitely not have gone to the school for the second grade Hawaiian fest and watched Joe clunking painted dowels on the floor and then on his partner's dowels while singing incomprehensible Hawaiian words and wearing Nathaniel's Hawaiian shirt, looking very much as though he belonged on a beach and a surfboard.

Is this depression? Feeling like everything is too hard, requires too much effort, is overwhelming, is not tasty, or interesting, or worth expending energy? I know that Dr. Clark and his nurse mentioned depression as normal during radiation, and I know other cancer survivors have said that it took six months, eight months, a year before they felt better. My body feels better, but my jaksaa doesn't.

Maybe my children are saving me from sinking deeper. I enjoy interacting with them, and with my husband and my mom and my friends. I know I sound cheerful when I talk to people, because that makes me feel cheerful. And I do manage to do things. Some things. So hurrah for children!