People ask me all the time how my life has changed since I got my stem cell treatment. I always reply with “it’s just normal and boring now.” Wonderfully normal and boring though it always feels so anticlimactic, like I should have gotten my life back and run with it. I should have moved to Greece, or gone back to school to be a doctor, or something really dramatic like that. But those were not the things I longed for. I wanted the little things back - the ones that when you don't have, are anything but small. To laugh without hurting, and eat without being sick, and walk without falling.

The days are gone where every minute reminds me of what I went through, or who I used to be. I don’t get overly excited when I can do commonplace tasks anymore. I’m used to being able to finish running all my errands without collapsing from exhaustion, or ending up even more sick than before. I can attend all family functions, and actually be part of them instead of watching from the couch. I can make plans for vacation and work and silly things like getting my hair done, and they never get interrupted by IV schedules or bad days where I wake up unable to move at all.

For days at a time now, I forget where I’ve been….how far I come. All I know is this amazingly simple life I have now. And then out of the blue, a day like today happens, and I wish I could go back to those people who ask me how my life has changed, and point them to this moment. The moment where I’m sitting on the couch eyes welled with tears because now that my life is so normal, when my brain visits a time when it wasn’t, it can tend to…well, punch me in the face.

Valentine’s Day. It is a day of love and blessings, and possibly the most well executed marketing plan Hallmark ever had. But for me, it’s so much more. And the irony of it all is that, in the ebb and flow of my normalness, I almost forgot. But then something reminded me.

I got flowers today. Beautiful roses and lilies and carnations. A little lady came to my door and said she was from the flower shop and someone must think I'm very special. She walked away and had no idea what she left me with.

The last time I got flowers delivered like this was years ago, when flowers meant “I hope you feel better, or at least feel less miserable.” “I’m sorry you’re stuck in the hospital – again.” “We don’t know what else to do so we're sending these.” "We're sorry we don't visit but it's much too upsetting."

With the delivery of today’s flowers came both an acutely sickening and then insanely beautiful revelation: It’s the first time I’ve received flowers that I can remember, where I knew with absolute certainty, I’d outlive them.

But that’s not all.

It just happens to be that two years ago today, Valentine’s Day 2008, I boarded a plane from Delhi to San Francisco, without a wheelchair for the first time in way too many years. I was headed home from India after my first round of human embryonic stem cell therapy. I could walk and run and travel alone and eat what I wanted and stop worrying about tight medication time tables and pain maintenance plans and whether or not I’d live to see my nephew grow up.

These are the slivers of life that I think I see differently now. The way the Universe pieces things together just when you thought you were done remembering, growing, moving forward in big leaps.

My dear Charlotte, thank you for reminding me of the importance of Valentine's Day – beyond love and flowers and Hallmark’s fortune. Thank you for your impeccable timing, not just today, but always. And thank you thank you thank you for giving me a gift far beyond these beautiful blooms. I love you for many things but this moment, for the seemingly mundane opportunity to enjoy these flowers drenched with rich color, and then to still be here when they fade away; healthy enough to stand on my own two feet at the kitchen sink, empty the vase, and wash it.