My mom

My mom's got breast cancer. She found out last week. She meets with her doc tomorrow, who may say to operate immediately. Which is her preference. Her mom died of cancer at 38, so she believes in "Cut early, cut deep."

All prayers and propitiations welcome.

My mother lives at the base of a thousand-foot cliff, in a tiny cabin on stilts with high tide splashing the floorboards. After retiring, she went to live alone on a desert island in the south Pacific for five years. It was tiny; 150 feet across, with two palm trees. No electricity, no water except rain, no shelter. She slept outside for two years then Marshallese friends from an island thirty miles away wove her a hut out of pandanus leaves. "You make 50 look good," I said. "Don't wait till you're 50," she said. That was twenty years ago. I want her around a long time, chainsawing logs, pruning nasturtiums, and feeding the octopus under her deck.

I don't think either of us are exactly facing her cancer, although we're both in reflexive info-gathering/fast-action mode. It is a shadowy visitor who has materialized in the doorway, for whom we are dutifully finding an extra chair and silverware -- but we haven't stopped our conversation.