School’s out. The kids’ final report cards came in the mail… but they weren’t here to receive them. Last week, we dropped them off at camp for three and a half weeks. It is our summer vacation. Even though it’s the third summer in a row they’re gone, the sudden silence that descends over the house is still stunning. It takes time to get used to. The undone projects in our brains tumble forth, jostling for an opportunity to be addressed at last. But the pace is less frenzied. We don’t need to know in the morning what we’re making for dinner that night. I want to take things easy, but I want to get things done. I finally scrubbed the bathroom tile after weeks of thinking about it. But I also had a nice long chat on the phone with Mom, and while I was looking out the window, two Monarch butterflies floated past.

Lately I have felt my body less buffeted by the disease that insinuated itself some six years ago now, and more annoyed by normal signs of aging. A knee injury from last October doesn’t just get better on its own, I find, and the resulting inactivity has a cascade of negative effects on my wellbeing. So. Exercise. Diet. Structure. All of the things I’ve been putting off are no longer putoffable. My translation work has also been taking some interesting and exciting turns.

I wonder what the next few summers will bring, because I seem to have the luxury to, now. Come this November, the anniversary of my last gamma knife surgery in 2015, I will have been in remission for four whole years. That feels like an important milestone in terms of easing up on anxiety. My response to treatment is durable, and space age ideas are being tested for use down the road.

There’s a lot more I can be doing to “transcend the navel” and make an impact in the wider world. I don’t feel as strongly that I need to do that in terms of raising awareness about my cancer or its treatment anymore, per se — it’s a different world now, one in which I more often than not encounter people who are familiar with immunotherapy or targeted therapy, and who understand that what may have at one time seemed like a death sentence (Stage Four) may now (with a lot of luck) be merely a clinical label, applied to a patient who doesn’t do much more in a typical day than remember to take her pills.

I wouldn’t say that this is goodbye to the blog — writing here has absolutely sustained me over a number of years, and from looking at the stats I continue to see that people worldwide find their way to my blog to read particular posts. I hope they’re helpful. I never got around to classifying everything like I thought I would. (Life comes at you fast, and it’s hard to catalog as it’s happening.) But I think that overall, my focus is elsewhere these days — like how best to evict the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I’ll check in when I have something to say and when I get scan results, as always. I hope you’ll comment when you have something to say. I’m doing well, and I’m wishing you well, too. Wear sunscreen.