The weather is a roller coaster. One day it is freezing, the next normal for March, then 95 degrees. Then the cycle starts again. The cranes arrived what felt early and now every day with a south wind carries more of them away. There is still a week left in our “season” of tours and speakers. The cranes don’t care. They listen only to the wind.

My daughter will start radiation next week. Her third time doing this so we know the drill now—the simulation scan, the black x’s on her body in permanent marker covered in tape to line her up with “the beam”. The scary list of side effects. Those are tomorrow’s problem. For today, everything is scheduled and planned — chemo this week, then to Omaha next Monday morning. Her dad will take her and I’ll come meet them after work. The apartment is reserved. The appointments made. It’s a balancing act between work schedule and holidays and busy seasons and chemo, but we are doing it.

Except this morning the radiation oncology office called. They want an MRI of her hip to better plan the radiation field.

This will mean another trip to Omaha. This week. When she is already having chemo appointments and feeling nauseous. When things are crazy at work. When we hadn’t planned for this.

But I know the drill now. Cancer treatment is one big exercise in letting go of control. I remember being shocked the first time the oncologist office called and told me when her appointment was. They didn’t ask, they didn’t call to schedule. It didn’t matter if we were busy. That’s when the appointment was.

I guess I get it. This is what we do now. Everything else will wait.

But to someone who prefers to be in control, someone who had myself convinced I was in control, this was a big adjustment.

We have been at the mercy of doctors’ schedulers for over a year now and it still catches me off guard. But now at least I know that any illusion of being in control is exactly that: an illusion.

Now, at least more frequently than before, I just accept that what is happening is what is happening. There’s no point in resisting it. There’s no point in fighting it. No point in wishing it were different.

The south wind blows and more cranes leave every day. The turkey vultures are returning along with the kestrels and the grackles. The prairie wakes up and comes back to life in a roll of spring thunder.

And I am here. I control the things I can control, which is almost nothing in the scheme of things. I advocate. I research. I make kale smoothies and refill water so she is hydrated. I gently insist that the MRI be next week when we are already there so she doesn’t have to spend another full day on the road to Omaha. It causes a hubbub. The scheduling lady isn’t used to resistance. But the nurse calls me to clarify and it all works out fine. MRI next week after a radiation appointment.

Then I go to yoga. I breathe a deep Spring South wind breath into my lungs and feel the cranes stir in my chest. I lay quietly and listen to the chaos of a spring thunder storm in my mind. I can’t control it and sometimes that is the most horrible helpless feeling there is, but I can sit here in the midst of it all and maybe that is no small thing.