Steve McQueen Weekend

Last week, I sat in a waiting room with a woman whose cancer had spread to her brain. She had been a piano teacher and her hands were beautiful. After a few minutes she said what all with advanced cancer wish, “Why can’t I just live with my cancer?” then smiled and said, “Let’s not waste a day”. Her smiles and hug stayed with me all weekend as I rode my scooter around the back streets of Houston dreaming I was Steve McQueen in the movie the Great Escape and trying to catch up with my son who was running the marathon. At the end of Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day, she asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”