Like a Moth to a Flame

Mother Tongue is a magazine that interrogates what it means to be a mother in the 21st century, and this story packs an incredibly powerful punch. Reporting from a children’s cancer ward, it offers an honest and intensely human view of the women (and one man) who find themselves struggling to hold their lives together while the doctors and nurses work to save their children.

Francesca bought crystals online – jagged shards of purple amethyst, green malachite and pink tourmaline that she swore had magical powers. Maggie ran 12 miles a day but subsisted on saltines from the snack closet. Brittany smoked weed behind the hospital dumpster with Tony from housekeeping. Kara was a cutter. Susie stole Wet n Wild nail polish from CVS. There was drinking, pills and cocaine – because you couldn’t sleep anyway. And me? I was having an affair with my bandmate, Joe, sneaking away to his guitar-filled basement apartment in Hoboken every chance I got.

Sometimes it felt like we were all clichéd archetypes pulled from the pages of Girl, Interrupted: the laminated ID bracelets, the constant squabbling in the halls, the sense that we’d been institutionalized against our will. But we hadn’t been committed – we were Cancer Moms. And faced with our children’s mortality, we’d taken refuge in our darkest, basest desires.

I first met Francesca at the coffee cart. Her serene, heart-shaped face and gold crucifix reminded me of a Renaissance maiden, though her mouth was all Brooklyn. “What kinda cancer ya’ kid got?” she asked, offering me some Coffee Mate. “Brain tumor,” I answered, and then I burst into tears. She took my hand, slipping a small red rock into my palm. “Carnelian,” she said. “Hold it when ya’ scared.”

Francesca and I were both moms of twins, juggling one child in the hospital and one at home with our husbands – and a revolving cast of well-meaning friends and family we nonetheless had to micromanage from our phones. Between blood draws and reaching for the pink puke bucket, I’d send texts like, “Hi Mom, can u thank Nadia for the lasagna? Also lmk how it goes with the HVAC guy. And can Dad or someone deal with Aunt Phyllis, she thinks if she gives to the GoFundMe the Russians will steal her identity, lol thanks!”

My sons, Lou and West, had just turned one. I barely knew them, let alone how to save Lou’s life. “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” Francesca liked to remind us. “Then we must be some badass mother-fuckers!” Brittany chimed in, before heading out for another smoke.

I wasn’t sure if I was a badass motherfucker or just a fucked-up mother. In the surreal weeks leading up to Lou’s diagnosis, I had started texting Joe again. My husband, Ian, was passing out drunk on the couch, leaving me to care for an increasingly listless, hysterical Lou and a feverish, teething West. I wish I could blame my affair with Joe on sleep deprivation, or say that it was a one-time thing. But this unspoken dynamic had been going on for years.

As long as I had Joe, I didn’t have to deal with the fact that I was married to an alcoholic, albeit one I loved and now had children with. Ian didn’t have to get sober or confront the ways I felt abandoned by his drinking. And Joe – older, sober and a ’90s slacker type, whom I also loved – never had to truly commit. The empty mini bottles of Ketel One vodka I was once again finding in Ian’s briefcase felt like permission. I relied on them as much as he did.