Karen the editor's page.

When most people talk about their families, it's a pretty straight-up conversation. I have this many sisters, this many brothers, blah blah blah. But do my family tree and you'll need a flow chart. I have two half-brothers, two half-sisters and a stepbrother my father adopted. So, as far as I can figure, that makes him my adopted half-brother. I think.

But that's all on my dad's side. On my mom's side, it's pretty easy. It's just her ... and me.

And that's why what happened three years ago, on Christmas Eve no less, was so hard to cope with. Around Thanksgiving, my mom's doctor told her she might have a problem. One surgery and some tests later, the verdict came just as most people were wrapping last-minute gifts: breast cancer. It was news far too many women get, but my initial reaction was surprise.

My mom was always so healthy and did all the right things. Somehow, I had thought the tests would all be fine and things would end there. But that wasn't the case. Just before Valentine's Day of that year, she had another surgery and then swung right into chemotherapy.

There are very few clubs I've never wanted to be a part of. But that year I joined one made up solely of people with no desire to belong to it--Kids With Parents Who Have Cancer.

To jump right to the end of this story, my mother is now doing great and (knock on wood) we hope she will continue to be in good health.

But as very strange as this might sound, if you were to ask me or my mom about that year, neither of us remembers a whole hock of a lot about it. I can tell you neither of us ever wants to see a popsicle ever again (they make patients suck on them during chemo to help avoid mouth sores from the cancer cell-destroying chemicals--charming).

What I can tell you is that once you have a parent with a serious illness, you are never the same. There is something in you that just fundamentally changes. Maybe it's knowing your parents won't be around forever. Maybe it's the realization that, sometimes, life events are random and there's no amount of fight that can win certain battles. Maybe it's the heart-stopping truth that people can just slip right out of our lives when we need them the most. it is a darkness none of us ever knows until the inevitable happens and we have to step right into it.

While I'd love to tell you we've spent every day since we got out of that chemo ward being the perfect, enlightened mother-and-daughter duo, the truth is that we've gone right back to mostly driving each other nuts--just like most moms and daughters out there. But maybe the biggest change of all is this: I no longer mind a bit.