On New Year’s Eve, on our way to Maria’s house in Goudi for Renaissance, we pass by Agia Sophia. We look at the entrance, at the alley leading to the children’s clinic “Elpida-Marianna V. Vardinogianni”.

A few days before Christmas, as every year, we went to the medical and nursing staff, as well as to the parents and children of the TAO, the haematological and oncological dispensary “Agia Sophia”. About our second home. Fifteen days later we will see them again in the polyclinic for routine examinations of a little girl who did not pay the slightest attention to the fact that we passed in front of her “hospital”. She thought she would see Theodoris, Michalis and Dora, Maria’s dog.

The rest is for us: mom, dad, grandmother. Which of the three of us said “who should be now?” We are referring to FB continuing chemotherapy. We think of little L., who completes the comeback. The rest of the parents with whom we had a group psychotherapy for a year and a half thanks to Cancer. The boy we saw in 2020 has disappeared…

Again, this anger at herself: the baby finished treatment in March, the tests are clean, and sadness came after a 26-month marathon.

Flashlight and keychain for all the kids who want to fly high.

Race on rough road where you have to run from time to time. As soon as you cut the finish line, you fell to your knees. And it annoys you. You should be happy, happy. You, of course. But that’s half the picture. The other half is what wakes you up at night. Someone “old”, of course, warned you: later, later everything will come. But someday they will leave.

During the fireworks, I lit the lantern I had brought with me on Maria’s porch. Together we let it fly into the night sky. “You all make a wish – from the inside.” I made my own wish as I watched it fly upward until it turned into a small flame in the dark sky.

On Monday at the office, I found an envelope waiting for me from Nadezhda, the Association of Friends of Children with Cancer. It contained the club’s charm for 2023, created by Marianne Limou, VP of The Hope: wings of flight. I remembered the story in verse with Erato in the summer. “Eve (that is, her younger sister) will also get leukemia?” “Of course not”. “Why; How did I get there? “What are you studying? Do you want your sister to suffer like you do?” Pause. Then dryly: “I don’t remember being bothered”…

Happy New Year to all testing children and parents.