Last week I wrote a post inspired by Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, entitled The Sunshine of My Life. How whatever life threw at me, Tyler was the one who kept me going, the one that was worth living with all of this physical and mental pain, just to have to the privilege of raising this incredible person.

A couple of nights ago we had Chinese take-out.  Tyler loves the whole fortune cookie bit.  I give him first choice, let others pick and I take the remaining one.  I can’t remember what anyone else’s fortune was, but I will never forget my own:

“Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you.”

It made me realize that I usually feel more unhappy than happy.  I mourn what chronic illness has taken from me and I have never made peace with it.  I have so much anger, so many questions such as “Why did this happen to ME?”, and so much worry.

But why do I keep doing that, what am I searching for when my little boy is just next to me? Is there any happiness greater than having this gift that is my son?

I’m not usually one to give much creedence to fortune cookies, but my mother loves to tell the story of when she was eating in a Chinese restaurant with a friend in early 1969.  Her fortune was:

“Every baby born is finer than the last.”

My mother joyfully exclaimed to her girlfriend, “I’m pregnant!”  Her friend said something along the lines of “You think your pregnant because of a fortune cookie?”

I was that baby.