the hard summer

2001.

Summer 2001. When I lay out the specifics on paper, it doesn’t sound so great. At the beginning of the season, my mom had her thyroid removed. She had cancer, but my parents continued to reassure me that they caught it early and she would be fine.

When I first got the news, it was like a gut punch to the stomach. Was this it? My whole life I’d been consumed with the fear of cancer. It seemed like both cancer (and AIDS) was all anyone talked about when I was a kid, and now, cancer had come for my mom. For our family.