217/365 Mother

"It probably isn't cancer because thyroid cancer is rare," my doctor shakes her head. "And highly curable."

But once someone puts the word cancer into the conversation, it kind of derails your day. It makes you have one of those "life before your eyes" moments, well, hours, in which you debate how you have been living your life and how, perhaps, you should start living your life.

"I'm really glad you said something about the swallowing difficulty," she says, completely seriously. And hands me orders to go to an ultrasound place to have a scan.

On the way home, kids in the car, I started going down that terrible road. If I were to die, Leo wouldn't know me at all. Maeve would have nothing more than snapshot images and amalgamations of memory and photos and stories she was told. Sophia would remember. And maybe that would be worse. I tried to think of motherless children I knew growing up and I realized I didn't know any. Fatherless, yes, for various reasons, mostly due to abandonment. I thought about my ex-boyfriend from high school and my best friend from high school and friends from college. I thought about Nikki when her dad left for good. But that was different. He packed his bags and drove away.

I know my kids are loved and people would sweep in and protect them and be there for them. I know. But for the third time since Sophia was born, I had that moment of, oh no. All the things I wouldn't be able to say, all the things I wouldn't be able to be there for.

And then I pushed it out of my mind with a list. A is for albatross, B is for bunting, C is for cardinal, D is for duck, E is for...egret. Yeah, egret.