On this sunny, twenty-seven-degree December morning, my husband Scott and I walk Tedy, our cranky eleven-year-old Jack Russell terrier mix, and Archie, our five-month-old mini poodle–Wheaten terrier–sheepdog puppy, around our suburban neighborhood west of Boston. We keep an eye out for icy patches on the snow-covered sidewalks while we train Archie to walk next to us, using our dog trainer’s technique of lowering a peanut butter–covered spatula and saying, “Side.”

There’s a joyous goofiness in the sloppy way Archie lunges at the spatula, and clumps of peanut butter begin to dot his black-and-white muzzle. His over-the-top puppiness contrasts with his older brother’s grouchy disinterest in this whole business of being rewarded for walking alongside us. Tedy is salty about the cold, even wearing the puffy, sage-green winter coat we wrestled onto him. He periodically stops walking and elevates his thin tan-and-white paw, as though grievously wounded, until we extract clumps of snow from between his petite paw pads.

These morning walks are our counterbalance, our touch-the-grass-forget-the-world’s-problems part of our day, where we, for the duration of the walk, ignore the bad news that relentlessly floods our phones at the end of 2025. We would need to engage our compartmentalization muscles repeatedly throughout this day in December.

Back at our house, I wipe off the dogs’ paws as well as the peanut butter from Archie’s face. That’s when I remember I forgot to place our outgoing mail in the red mailbox at the end of our driveway. That morning over coffee, I’d written thank-you cards to the kind folks who’d delivered meals to our home that month. 

A little while later, Scott is on his way to visit his father, who may or may not know it’s his ninety-third birthday, an occasion he used to enthusiastically remind us of, particularly when his new age would end in a zero or a five and he wanted us to “make him a party.” But on this birthday, his body is under assault from late-stage kidney disease and congestive heart failure. Although he’s refusing health care, including oxygen, he recently called 9-1-1. When the EMTs arrived, my father-in-law angrily waved them away in the slurred speech that made him sound like he was mumbling underwater. I have no idea what Scott will find when he arrives at the apartment to see his father on what’s likely his final birthday. 

After showering, getting dressed, and seeing Scott off, I grab my laptop to review my MFA students’ end-of-semester submissions. One, about the beauty and artistry of baking homemade bread, tugs at my heart with its tender affection for human endeavors that feed our bodies, our souls. I compliment the writer, but do not tell her how something about her writing threatens to unleash the tears lurking beneath my surface. I have lots of things to do today, I think. No time for crying. Final grades are due soon. Just keep reading essays.

Last week, when I submitted final grades for the fall undergraduate journalism class I taught, I realized I wouldn’t be seeing the inside of the journalism classroom until the following fall. I’d requested an unexpected leave of absence so that I could be available to help my twenty-four-year-old son, who, just before Thanksgiving, was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s the good kind of lymphoma, we were told, with an exceptionally high cure rate. He’ll be able to have a career, get married, and have kids, the oncologist told my son and me as we quietly wept in the privacy of his cramped office.

The cancer treatment will take six months—a combo of chemotherapy and immunotherapy every two weeks—and should, the doctor vowed, eradicate the disease that has infiltrated my hearty, six-foot-four son’s bone marrow. As we sat there in shock, the oncologist seemed almost celebratory because it was the kind of cancer that could be cured. Even so, he warned us that the treatment would be hard. My son would likely experience fatigue, which would intensify as the treatments pig-piled atop one another. The nausea would be managed with medication. My son would likely lose his curly brown hair. 

On the drive home from this life-altering appointment, I remembered how, when he was three, all I could see was the soft fluff of his then-golden-brown hair when he walked past the kitchen counter. Or how his long curls spilled out from the back of his lacrosse helmet when he was in middle school. My mind couldn’t conjure an image of how my youngest child would look without those curls. 

Now we are on the cusp of my son’s second treatment. This time it will take place at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, which boasts exponentially superior facilities compared to the local oncologist’s office, where my son had his first treatment a week after the diagnosis. That initial treatment was administered in a small, open room filled with sick-looking patients, patients who were decades older than my Generation Zer. Patients weren’t allowed to have anyone sit with them or to speak on the phone. After the fact, Scott and I learned that our son had experienced a severe allergic reaction to one of the medications inserted into the port that had been surgically placed beneath the skin on the right side of his chest. The medication was stopped, and my son’s system was flooded with Benadryl and steroids. 

Meals have been arriving at our house since our twenty-seven-year-old daughter, who lives in New York City, alerted family and friends of her brother’s diagnosis and created a shared spreadsheet for meal contributions. The arriving meals feel like love. 

We have a community; we have people; we are blessed, we keep saying to ourselves like a mantra, hoping the repetition will drown out our fear.

After lunch, I drive to a neighboring town to pick up my seventy-eight-year-old father. Dad lives in an apartment complex for retirees where the rent includes three meals a day. He likes to call it “The Home.” When my brother and I moved him in nearly four years ago after a cascade of harrowing incidents left him unable to safely care for himself in his Cape-style home on the other side of the state, he joked about this being the last place he’d live and that he’d probably leave “in a body bag.” 

I’m taking Dad to Walgreens—one of the few stores that won’t overwhelm him—to pick out some Christmas and gift cards for his grandchildren. Regardless of what’s going on in the world and in our lives, it’s still the holiday season and there are things to be checked off to-do lists. As he hobbles through the store, I prod his short-term memory. Dad, do you need toothpaste? I ask. Think about how much you had left this morning. Do you need tissues? Paper towels? I try to remember if he’s mentioned anything he needs. We conclude our shopping by perusing the snack aisle, where Dad loves to select junk food and soda. Today it’s Lay’s potato chips, Cheetos, and a twelve-pack of mini cans of Coke. 

We walk slowly from one end of the store to the other, back and forth, retracing our steps often, until we finish all of our shopping. By the time we reach the cashier, Dad doesn’t move to take out his wallet to pay. Instead, he asks, You’re gonna deduct this from my account? I used to reimburse myself a couple of times a year for the purchases made on his behalf, but paying rent for “The Home” while keeping up his house is draining his bank account. I look away when he asks about his account and greet the cashier instead.

After our Walgreens visit, as we walk into the festively decorated coffee shop with notes from feel-good holiday music weaving through the heavy aroma of espresso, my father says, “I’ve never been in a Starbucks before.” There’s no way this can be true. Mom loved Starbucks. 

A short while later, I bring my father and his purchases up to his third-floor apartment. Concerned he might get confused about which grandkid gets which gift card, I tuck a slip of paper with each name and designated gift card inside the Grinch greeting cards I selected because they made me laugh. I wonder whether he’ll spell everyone’s name correctly this time. 

By the time I arrive back home, I find my son in the kitchen preparing to go to the gym, for only the second time since his cancer diagnosis. A hopeful sign. Once a daily gym-goer who benched unfathomably heavy amounts of weight, he hasn’t been a regular since late summer, when he began to experience crushing fatigue as the lymphoma silently sapped his youthful energy. Worries about him catching one of the many illnesses running rampant in our area spiral in my head. I do not give voice to my worries. The oncologist cleared him to go to the gym when it wasn’t  too crowded, so this worry is my problem, not his. I stuff this concern down with all the others.

Referring to his upcoming treatment at Dana-Farber, he says, “When we go tomorrow, I’m gonna drive. Depending on how I’m feeling afterward, you can drive home. I want to prove to myself I can do it.”

When he leaves, I pick up my phone to check the app my family uses to share our locations. I’m checking to see if Scott ever arrived at his dad’s, but the app interface is glitchy and I can’t tell if he did. Without panicked texts or calls from Scott, I decide to trust that my father-in-law has made it through most of his birthday, his favorite twenty-four hours of the year. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m living the title of that movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once. We don’t get to choose what happens in the messy timelines of our lives, but we do get to choose how we move through them. 

On this day in December, we continued teaching our puppy to walk on a leash. On this day in December, the puppy’s silly, peanut butter–laden face brought me joy. On this day in December, I discovered incredible beauty in a grad student’s essay about making homemade bread and found laughter while helping my dad select Christmas cards for his grandkids. On this day in December, I reminded myself that my son’s cancer is the curable kind, treated by talented physicians practicing nearby. On this day in December, I feel gratitude toward the woman from our church who told me she’d drop off Chipotle the day after the next chemo appointment.

At the end of this day in December, we gather in our kitchen and, in the true spirit of our interfaith family, light the candles on our silver menorah for the third night of Hanukkah. After we take Archie outside for his last potty run of the day, Tedy beats us all upstairs to the bedroom and burrows himself inside his fleece-lined bed. To settle his mind, Scott plays chess on his phone, the screen’s glow illuminating his tired face in the darkened room. I pop a sleeping pill, insert my earbuds, and stream the comedy Modern Family on my phone to drown out my own racing thoughts. I have a lot to do tomorrow. I need my rest.