Blog 2656 – 02.05.2023

A Dream Realized

When my wife Linda and I met each other for the second time thirty-five years ago I think one of the things that she found most attractive about me was that I had an eight year old daughter that I loved very much. Linda wanted so much to be a mom, but had been told by her cancer doctors that a pregnancy might cause a recurrence of breast cancer. At thirty-seven she had undergone a mastectomy of her left breast. Her plastic surgeon had performed reconstructive surgery using a muscle from her abdomen and it’s surrounding fatty tissue to match her right breast. Linda’s OB/GYN told her that she had endometriosis which made pregnancy unlikely in her case. But her dream would not die.

On April third 1990 Linda’s dream and a dream I had held in my heart since I was nineteen years old we’re both realized, our son Jonathan David James Wallace White was born. The picture above was published in the Houston Chronicle newspaper with a story about Linda realizing her dream against the odds.

Linda is an amazing woman and a wonderful wife and mother. I recently rewatched the live action Disney movie Sleeping Beauty and when Belle sings, “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more that I can tell. And for once it might be grand to have someone understand, I want so much more than they’ve got planned.” I thought of my lovely and loving wife who was not content to be a farm girl from a small town in South Carolina and so left home after high school at eighteen to travel over a thousand miles to the big city of Houston to work and to attend college because she had bigger dreams. Linda had a long and successful career as a banker and in her late thirties realized her dream of becoming a mom. She is my dream come true. She is my Belle and I hold a vision of her healthy, happy, and whole always in my heart and mind, as I do all those that I love and continue to.

Your friend and fellow traveler

David White

Beauty and the Beast (Live Action) – Belle (reprise) | IMAX Open Matte Version