I’m sitting in the waiting room at UCI Cancer Center. It’s 10:49am; she should be out in an hour. There are pink ribbon gel gems on the windows, and a basket of “les fleurs” on the counter. It feels warmer than I’d imagined it would be.

I flew in from New York yesterday. Arriving just before her cut off for food intake, so we devoured a variety of Gummy Pandas I had picked up at JFK. Blueberry Acai was my favorite, hers was lemon ginger.

I cried when they told me they would give her the cadillac margarita of anesthesia.
“You only have one mom,” the doctor said as she carted mine away.

If you subscribe to the belief that challenges are what lead to growth, I should be six feet tall after the last two years. Instead I feel so fragile in this moment. Maybe I’m starting to realize that all of this stuff – all of this ambition – is just a coping mechanism. A way to artificially defend against the things I can’t control. Or maybe she’s just the greatest human being who’s ever lived.