I’ve received many a beautiful bouquet since my diagnosis, but sometimes the best arrangements come from the grubby hands of your five-year-old and are harvested in your own backyard. I believe these are technically weeds, but they warmed my heart nonetheless. Some people have asked how my daughter has been handling my illness, and the answer I give them is, “fairly well.” That’s because she doesn’t have much of a frame of reference for it, despite a few children’s books we’ve read her on the subject. I think she understood that something serious was happening during and after my surgery, because I stayed in the hospital for a few days and was pretty laid up when I returned home. She kept a wide berth then, clearly weirded out by the bandages, stitches, and drain that hung from my neck. This was followed by a brief period, around her birthday, after I’d recovered from surgery and before radiation, when I felt like myself and could do the things with her that I normally do. But that time has since passed, and now I feel like lame, Sick Mom again.
I think the more complicated question that people haven’t asked is how I’m handling my illness as a parent. Like many mothers, I have high expectations for myself in this role. I want to be an active and involved part of my daughter’s life, and it kills me a little bit that I struggle even to read her a story right now (the sores in my mouth, along with its dryness, make speaking for any length of time painful and difficult). I don’t like that she sees me in pretty much the same position every day, which is resting on the couch. I don’t like that I’m often too tired to give her a bath, or walk with her while she rides her scooter. But these things, I must remember, are temporary, and there are all manner of parents in the world with their own limitations, physical or otherwise, who love their kids no less well for these. And, as long as kids feel that love, my sense is they’ll be just fine.
Well, then 