My grandmother said, "If you've got your health you can walk on water."

When May was born at Mt Sinai Hospital in NYC I was 34. In the hospital my friend Lois said; "You will be caring for your older parents when your children are teenagers." The momentary veneer of joy was pricked by the strange sense of a distant future. At the time my mother seemed vibrant and youthful, I couldn't imagine her in need of my help. Nighteen years later, it feels like a moment ago I was changing diapers and picking up toys. I hear Lois' prophetic words clearly, they are stuck in my ears. A healthy woman most of her life, my mother fought cancer six years ago. Modern medicine and chemotherapy may have beat the disease, but I feel they destroyed her health. Since that time she has been in and out of the hospital. My almost 90-year-old stepfather and mother live hundreds of miles from us. In early December her hip broke and she needed surgery to have it replaced. Most of December and part of January I tried to split myself between her hospital in California and my children in Seattle. My mother's inner strength is remarkable. She was able to go home from the rehabilitation hospital in January. In February cold and wet, I exhaled and let myself relax, for a moment. The evening of the 14th my cell phone rang; "Mom, please pick me up I'm really sick." My older daughter had been fighting a respiratory infection for over a week, but now she sounded miserable. Her college is about 75 miles from our home, a mixed blessing. I kissed Diego and Summer goodnight and spent the next 90 minutes driving south. When I arrived at her apartment door she was shivering with a fever of 102. I bundled her in blankets, reclined the car seat and by midnight we were home. The next morning our doctor found her flu had become a mild pneumonia. The next two nights before the fancy expensive antibiotic kicked in, her body wrestled with fever, chills and a heavy chest cough. I was on autopilot, armed with soup, tea, hot water bottles, remedies and medicine. She had not felt this vulnerable since her tonsils came out at age 14. She slept in my bed and was afraid to be alone. By Monday the fever broke and she began to smile. Tuesday morning I drove her back to school. My thoughts then turned to my younger daughter who was about to meet her godmother in Paris. A trip planned for years. She fortified herself with sleep, Zinc, Vitamin C and more. She prayed to the vacation gods that she would be healthy. To be continued...