mandate

The plan was to convene all four family members for a simple, quiet winter holiday. It was the first time in five years that we would be together for Christmas.

But then reality intervened, in the form of life-threatening illness. Christmas this year was an emergency flight back to the country where the kid has health insurance. Tests, hospitals, specialists. Listening, advising, arguing with doctors, making soup, holding the hand of an adult I still see as my baby.

My child is resilient and will recover, not least because that is the mandate handed down from my own mother. But the business of parenting does not get easier as the kids get older. And I am, once again, humbled by the knowledge of what my mother endured and accomplished.

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