Waking up to the crisp summer air and early morning ruckus really is comforting isn’t it?  Listen, close your eyes for just a minute, silently.  Try to pick out some familiar sounds and smells you can identify, without knowing what the exact source is.  Here, the Gila woodpeckers are always up as soon as the sun starts making its way up the dark vast sky.  They’re working on their nests burrowed within the cacti for the upcoming months to make a safe sanctuary for their upcoming little ones.  None of us routine creatures are usually awake yet.  Soon we’ll stir up as everyone decides to roll out of bed for their early morning commute to work.
The cracked window above my face blows the cool morning air across my face.  There is no need to turn on the air conditioner quite yet, but soon we’ll have to shut the windows to protect us from the heat the desert knows so well.  The forecaster said last night that it should be almost 96 degrees today, the highest it’s been all week.  The buzzing of the heat and the illusions of water along the blacktop will soon be prominent as the day progresses.
I never thought I’d take so much pleasure out of the simple wonders and treasures in life that I never really thought about just a couple months ago.  I seem to stop and think about everything now, everything I see, everything I hear, everything I feel, and everything I taste.  I daydream about what has happened in the past, and sometimes I get so caught in my own little world  my mother has to wake me up from it. It seems better there. I go there often, to that better place.  I scare her when that happens. She shouldn’t worry though.
I wonder sometimes what it would be like to live off of the desert the way it has been ever since it was created, just like the woodpeckers.  They don’t have an ever-changing, “updating” world that they call home.  In our world everything changes -- trying to follow everyone else -- trying to fit in.  Why?  Why do we feel that we need the latest “iPhone”, a Mercedes, or a gigantic house we don’t really need?  The human race. It is a race, isn’t it?  A race to be the greatest, the most powerful, or the most “popular”.  We butt heads with our own kind and everything else living with us, including those who are innocent.  We foreshadow those we “look up to.” Most often for things we shouldn’t be looking up to them for, such as beauty, money, status, anything we don’t have, or cannot ever have.  Our world sometimes seems to revolve around money. Money can’t buy you happiness.  You need to find happiness in yourself, no matter where you are.  If you do that.  I guarantee everything will fall into place and everything will become more enjoyable.
By now you’re probably wondering what I’ve been talking about when I say that I take more time to notice the simple things and appreciate them more than I ever did before.  Just a couple months ago I was diagnosed with stage two Leukemia.  I had originally gone into the doctor because of some bruises that I didn’t know how I got, soreness, and feeling tired all the time.  I had told my mother that it was just the stress of school and pressure of the scholarships I so badly wanted, but she insisted that I go in as soon as possible.  The only reason I ever ended up going in was to make her stop bugging me about it.  Currently, I am a senior at Madlenton High School in Phoenix, Arizona.  I was on my way be valedictorian for our graduating class until I had gotten sick and fallen quite behind.  I had worked so hard for the privilege and within a month it was all taken away.  My mother reassures me that I will be able to graduate this spring with my class.  Seeing as how hard I have been working for it but I probably can.  I have my doubts though, being that it is only 4 months away. 
Now, I am stuck in bed all day with nothing to do but homework and ponder about what will happen in the future.  I guess it isn’t all that bad.  I don’t have to sit through 95 minute classes anymore and daydream.  I sleep in now as anyone would do if they could got the chance every day.  I want to go out sometimes, maybe even a walk down the street but I’m weak and my mother is worried that I will end up catching something, something even as little as the flu. Others don’t even think about being life threatening.  It’s normal to them.  But to me it’s like a scorpion, hiding under the sand, not in an unusual place though, it has always been there.  You have always known the tiny creature is there but one day you walk out into that sand barefoot and it decides to sting you.  Kind of like my future; I could go into remission while my disease hides under the sand like the scorpion does, it’s still there and prominent in your life though and at any time it could come back and “sting” me again.  Or, it could never go away and just get worse.  I’ll have to come back to write in a while.  Doctors’ appointment at seven this morning for another round of chemotherapy.  I’ll write soon. 
Love,
  Sara