Every day when I came home from school, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I never knew what to expect — she could be quite moody — but we often had long talks, sometimes with laughter, other times with anger or sadness or disappointment. And always with coffee and cigarettes.
Once, she told me that she wished I smoked so we could sit and have a cigarette together.
My parents had six kids in seven years and would have had more if my mother hadn’t been diagnosed with late-stage melanoma at age thirty-three. The doctor told her she had about a year to live and advised her not to have any more children.
