The Cranes

She was sitting up in the bed, the head tilted forward and her back leaning against it. She had her legs under the sheets; it was a cool night.
"If I could take this from you, I would, in a heartbeat. We love you so much," he was telling her.
She was nodding. She kind of always knew, didn't she?
"Cancer," the doctor said.
Her dad was still talking.
She was twelve.
...................................................................

"What do you mean, your parents decided to go to dinner and drag you with them? Kristen, it's Relay for Life! They know about it! They know I'm the team captain and that you're on the team and that you're my best friend and that this means a lot to me! Why would they do that?" I yelled into the phone, pacing back and forth in my high school Commons room. Rain had forced the big cancer fundraiser event indoors this year, but it wasn't stopping the spirits of the people involved. People still had games and activities set up, and team members were dressed up and walking the track to raise money for the American Cancer Society. It was sure to be a great night.
That is, if my team showed up.
This wasn't the first year my friends were on my Relay team. They had all done this event for the past couple of years, and it was always a blast. They always managed to have a good time while honoring those whose lives had been affected by cancer, and by celebrating all the survivors and fighters. It was a giant celebration of life, and it meant so much to me, as I was still fighting the disease, more than 5 years later.
Then why were there only two people from my 10 person team here??
I was getting upset. This wasn’t even the first thing to upset me that day. Earlier, my Mom had driven me to the school – an hour early. Nothing was set up. No one was there except for one organizer, who was just starting to clean the area. Why did Mom drag me there so early? I had other things to do. I had to give a speech that day, and I wouldn’t mind having an extra hour to go over it. But my Mom insisted we stay. So we did – but only because my Mom had the car keys. And what did we do for that hour? We sat. We watched tables being set up. Mom helped. I couldn’t, being a cancer weakling and all. We sat some more after the organizers shooed Mom away. We wasted an entire hour.
But when the hour was up, I had hoped it would get better. My friends were coming!
Little did I know.
I tried calling my friends and teammates, but they all had some crazy excuse. Jackie's mom was sick and she couldn't get a ride there - but when I offered to come get her (after all, there was nothing else for me to do at the moment without a team!), she quickly yelped, "NO! No, no, no, Kristen's going to drive me!" When I pointed out that I had just spoken to Kristen and that Kristen was out at a restaurant somewhere, Jackie replied, "Oh, yeah, when she's done she's coming by and getting me."
Okay.
Zandra said her car broke down. Again with the ride offer, and again I got, "Oh, I'm coming with Jackie." Uhh, Jackie's going with Kristen...later. "Um, yeah, me too!"
Fine.
The others? Excuses at the ready, just as lame.
Whatever.
Later, Kristen, Jackie and Zandra all show up in Kristen's car. Once they got there, Mom stopped by. Mom says something about a red car being in our driveway and blocking my Grandma and Grandpa in, who were there to visit for the weekend.
"Zandra! That sounds like your car! I thought it broke down!" I cried in surprise.
"Oh! Um, yeah, it was starting to act funny right on the highway by your house, so I pulled into the large open space across your house, and your family helped me get it to your driveway so it can stay there for now."
Right.
But someone pulled me by the arm to another group's game, and I was too happy to pay much attention to this weirdness. More people were finally showing up, and this year's event was living up to its predecessors, despite the rain.
After a long time, other teams started packing up and leaving. I realized that it was time to get going, and, on my Mom's suggestion, I invited my friends back to my house to sleepover. Usually the event already is a sleepover, but with the rain, people decided to pack it up instead. My friends were eager to come over, but instead of packing up, they just hung around. What? Why was everyone being so weird?
We had planned that Kristen would drive me home, but I didn't want to go until I knew that everyone was actually coming. Some of these people had never been to my house before and might need directions or something.
"Come on, I have to peeeeeee," Kristen whined to me, pulling on my arm and dragging me towards the exit.
"Kris, we're in our school, go use the bathroom!"
"But I don't like these bathrooms, can't we go to your house?"
"Are you kidding? You use these bathrooms everyday! Look, use the nurse's bathroom, it's a single and it's clean."
"Noooo, your house!"
Suddenly, my friend Meghan came by and pulled me by the arm. Why is everyone doing that to me today?
“Come with me!” Meghan exclaimed, leading me…actually, where was she leading me?
They stopped in the middle of the commons. And stood there.
“Meghan, what the hell????”
Meghan didn’t answer.
People were finally starting to leave to head to my place. And now, apparently, I was not.
“Meghan, we should go, there are people driving to my house right now, and my grandparents are over and probably sleeping, so I should really try to get there first! Plus, Kristen really has to pee and WON’T USE THESE BATHROOMS!” I said with a pointed glare at Kristen, who looked back sheepishly.
But then Meghan grabbed me by the shoulders and had me in a kind of hug-lock so that I couldn’t really escape. As I struggled to get free, Meghan went, “Kristen, go drive to her house, I’ll drive her back!”
Kristen ran out the door.
There were only a few people left lingering in the Commons – including me and Meghan.
“MEGHAN! LET ME GO! We NEED to get back! We’re not even doing anything here! What are you doing??” I yelled.
“Hmmm….oh, fiiiiiiine,” Meghan said slowly as she watched the last of the people in the Commons file out. “Let’s go.”
They headed into Meghan’s big SUV – one of the only cars left in the parking lot – and drove off down the small highway that takes us to my house. This being a highway – albeit a small one – the speed limit is 50 mph. Meghan was driving 35 mph.
“MEGHAN. What part of ‘I need to get there fast’ don’t you understand???” I yelled.
“Oh, I just feel so calm and relaxed, and there’s no one around, we’re fine!” she replied easily.
“Most teenagers go FASTER when there’s no one around, did you know that, Meg? In fact, FASTER would be a good idea right now. You don’t even have to go past the speed limit if you want to, but the speed limit might be a good idea. You’ll have to go FASTER to get up to that though! So how about going FASTER?”
Meghan sang along with the radio.
The normally 5-minute drive took quite a bit longer than that, and every extra minute just about killed me
“Great,” I thought, “I’ve survived cancer for 5 years and now I’m about to be killed by impatience – after Relay for Life. Anyone else see the irony, or is this just chemo brain?”
We finally got there. But, just as I feared, every single car is already parked in front of my house – and the carriage house, where they were going to sleep, is dark. Where is everyone?
Meghan rushed out the car door and ran into the darkness towards the house, leaving me with the job of carrying all of our crap inside. This crap includes paper towels, Relay t-shirts, and a purple boa I won. Lacking 3 hands, I wrapped the purple boa around my neck and grabbed everything else into my arms, then made my way to the still-silent carriage house. On the way, I passed the back entrance to my actual house, where I saw my mom and grandparents standing on the back porch.
“Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry, did everyone wake you guys? I was trying so hard to get everyone here quietly – you woudn’t believe all the crazy stuff that just happened – by the way, have you seen Meghan, I have to strangle her – sorry Grandma and Grandpa – “
“Wait, hon, wait, wait, you didn’t wake us, we just stayed up and watched a movie, it’s fine, then we came out here for some air. Come inside for moment, put that stuff down,” Mom said, gesturing towards the back door.
“But where is everyone?” I started to say, but – wouldn’t you know it – I got taken hold of by the arm and led inside.
We all walked through the back door into the kitchen, and as we stepped through the kitchen towards the middle room, I saw, first, Kristen, standing straight in my line of view. Kristen’s cheeks were flaming red, something they do whenever she’s embarrassed or extremely excited or hiding a secret. As we get closer, I could see more friends standing crowdedly in the tiny room, and there was something that astounded me even more than that: cranes. Paper cranes, origami cranes, everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, big ones, little ones, a huge one sitting on the cabinet, the rest dangling from fishing line hung from one end of the room to the other. Four long strands crisscrossed the room, hung from the corners and the middle on little hooks nailed in for just this purpose. A hundred other lines hang from these four long strands, each one carrying ten origami cranes separated by a shiny plastic bead.
My mouth hung open, somewhere between a wide-mouthed gape and a humongous grin. I was still carrying the paper towels and t-shirts and wearing the big purple feather boa. I looked ridiculous. My room looked incredible. My friends looked at me, smiling and laughing and clapping.
“Look what we did,” they said.
“I can see,” I replied when I regained speaking skills.
When I went back to being stupefied, they explained everything.
More than a month beforehand, I had been told by my doctors that I had a sudden growth spurt – but it was not the kind I was hoping for. It was of my cancer cells. They put me on a heavier chemotherapy and I had to stop attending school, finishing my work at home instead. While this was going on, one of my friends at school decided to do something for me. She organized a school-wide creation of 1,000 origami cranes. She taught friends how to fold a single square sheet of paper into a beautiful work of art. These friends taught other friends who taught other friends and so on. Pretty soon students and even teachers were in on this plan, making them during art classes or breaks, even sometimes during class. When some of my friends went on their annual Band Trip, they even made cranes out of ripped-up Busch Gardens maps!
The weekend of the Relay for Life, people willingly gave away their free Saturday to go to school and string these cranes on the fishing line, tying a knot in the bottom and adding a bead, crane, knot, bead, crane, knot, bead, crane, etc. for hours. They even came up with an ingenious way of transporting these creations to my house later on.
But how did they get these hanging in my room without me knowing?
Well, my Mom was in on it, certainly. Even my grandparents knew. Remember how Mom got me to the Relay an hour ahead of time? Turns out that was because my friends were due to show up at my house at that time and hang those cranes. While I was sitting in my high school, staring at nothing, tons of my friends were in my house, nailing hooks and stringing paper birds all over my room.
Can’t say I expected that.
They didn’t expect it to take so long, either. They thought for sure they’d be done in an hour, and then be able to head right to Relay.
They thought wrong.
Just in case you want to know, it takes more than an hour to hang up 1,000 cranes. But my friends were determined to finish it – they had to finish it – before I got home at the end of the night, so they would finish it…even if that meant they had to miss the beginning of Relay.
That’s right. While I was wondering where the rest of my team was and making phone calls, they were all there in my own house, together, finishing their project. Those lame excuses? They were truly lame excuses. Kristen’s family never went out to dinner; Jackie’s mom wasn’t sick; Zandra’s car was perfectly fine sitting in our driveway, where she drove it to hang those cranes! Meghan wasn’t crazy; she was trying to make sure everyone got to the house and took their spots before she got there. Kristen didn’t have to pee and hadn’t developed a sudden phobia of the mostly clean school toilets; she was just trying to get out of there and push me off onto Meghan. They all had a reason for their madness; there was just no way I could have known it!
So why 1,000 cranes, anyway? A very nice plaque that now hangs on my wall explains: “Japanese legend has it that the folder of 1,000 cranes gets a wish. We’ve made 999; the 1,000th one is for you – it’s your wish!”
Right then and there, with everyone staring at me, they taught me to make an origami crane. It now hangs above the doorway to the kitchen, right at the top and in the center.
One thousand paper cranes. There are one thousand paper cranes flying around my room. There are people who love me enough to fold one thousand paper cranes.
How could life be any better?