I thought of my grandmother, and my mother, and my great-aunt LaVerne, and all the women I’ve known and their white-knuckled strength in the face of the unspeakable, when I read this:
When
your daughter is nine months old, a neurosurgeon will say to you, “We
believe resecting the left side of her brain will help control the
seizures.”
The
seizures that she has all day, every day, dozens, hundreds; she was
born with a massively deformed brain, what did you expect?
You
think a minute, and you realize the doctor is saying they are going to
take out half your daughter’s brain, and throw it away, so much trash,
and you’re supposed to sign the consent form for this.
And
after the surgery, when the seizures come back, you will sit across the
table from the man who is now your ex-husband, the man you adored, but
life can kick the ass out of any romance, even yours, and you will
order a very large glass of tequila, and you will say, “What the hell
are we supposed to do now?”
And you hope the answer is going to be about slaying ten men and Satan, because you’re capable of that.Yes.Heroic
action? You are totally down with that. But the answer is, you are
going to go home and do the best you can to make a life out of what
you’ve been given.
You want to read the whole thing.
A.