Joey has a hard time staying in bed when we put him down for the night. When we ask him why he continually gets up, he tells us that he wants to be with us -- mommy and daddy --  and that he wants to watch TV and that he's just not tired. He is five years old. And he will try anything to coax us into allowing him to stay up just a little bit longer. Lately, he's been asking serious questions he knows will take some time to answer -- like how exactly does a light bulb work? And how does lightening get in the air? And how do you build a house? Last night, his questions followed a medical path -- a cancer path really.

Joey was almost four years old when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. He was young -- is still young -- but he knows the basics. He knows I've had cancer -- although the seriousness of it is a bit over his head -- and he knows medicine caused my hair to fall out and he knows I see the doctor over and over again and he knows I have sometimes felt not so well. He's been briefed on every step of the journey -- about my surgery, my port, my chemotherapy, my radiation. He's been prepared and informed, in a simple kind of way -- but cancer doesn't seem to phase him much. And sometimes I think this must seem a normal way of life to him, that he might think all little boys have mommies with cancer. And while he has never been outwardly affected by my cancer, he has certainly absorbed all the tidbits that have been shared with him -- and last night, all sorts of bits and pieces came tumbling out of his mouth. His goal was to avoid bedtime and to stay up later. He achieved his goal. But he also walked away with another mini lesson on the topic of cancer. He may have been just as happy with a Q & A session on the existence of the solar system or the functioning of car motors. But what he got -- besides a later bedtime -- was enlightening, I think. For both him and me.

Joey sat on a chair directly across from me last night when he first wandered out of his room. He curled up on a chair and said, Mommy, I want to ask you about this because I think you know a lot about it. I nodded and sighed and prepared myself for just about any line of questioning. And then he said, how do they make shots? It took me a while to determine what kind of shots he was talking about -- I don't know if he even knew at the time -- and we finally agreed on a discussion about injections. I told him about syringes and how they hold medicine and how a needle pinches the skin and how medicine goes into the body. Then he asked me, Do you remember when you had to do your breathing? My breathing. It took me a minute again to pinpoint what he meant. And then it hit me -- he remembered when I told him about the breathing I had to do during my radiation sessions. So I told him the story again -- that I had to put a tube in my mouth and had to listen for someone to tell me over a speaker to hold my breath. I told him that I would hold my breath and then someone would tell me when it was time for me to breath again. I told him that this happened a few times while big machines sent out special rays that would make me better. His response -- why didn't anyone stay in the room with you? He wondered why everyone left the room and why someone had to speak to me through a speaker. He wanted to know why I was all alone. I didn't tell him my real response -- that no one else wants to be in a room when radiation beams are bouncing all over the place -- so I told him instead that these people had to do their work in another room -- which is also true -- and Joey was happy with that. And then his last question came -- what about that metal in your body? Again,  not entirely clear but I soon determined that he was talking about my port. He asked how it got there and I told him a doctor cut my skin, slid it in, and then sewed up my skin. He asked if it hurt and I told him that I was asleep and couldn't feel anything. He sighed, nodded, was content. He marched back to bed, was asleep moments later and has said nothing of our conversation today.

These are the moments I savor -- when my initial frustration about a boy who won't stay in bed turns to pure joy about a boy who, regardless of intentions, talks to me and listens to me and hears my words. A boy who is concerned that I was alone for my radiation treatments and that I may have felt pain when my port was inserted. A boy whose lessons come at a young age and at all hours of the night -- night after night. A boy who just moments ago asked his first important question of the night --  how does drinking water help your sickness go away?