F*ck Cancer!

I'm driving to my favorite berry farm on a rural road in Ohio, completely absorbed in a story from the NPR's Moth Radio Hour that was devoted to fears. A woman in the story shares her fear of getting pregnant at 47 years of age as a result of occasional sex with her husband. She is telling the story with grace and humor, first describing her complete shock at the home pregnancy test results and then - a confirmation visit to her OBGYN.

"How did that happen?" her doctor reportedly asked her.

"You are asking me? Like you don't know how people get pregnant?" she retorts and goes into her fears again about being a mother at 47 who might be mistaken for a grandmother, upending her life for a new baby, describing the precious and happy reaction to the news by her husband.

I'm so absorbed in the story that I hardly pay attention to the car in front of me. It's a white Jeep, dirty with rural mud. It's toned back window is covered with some hand-written messages scribbled in pink (lipstick?). It also has a black and pink banner flapping in the air from the back passenger door. Suddenly, a tractor with a trailer hauling some heavy farm equipment turned into our lane in front of the Jeep. It slows us all down.

"Are you kidding me? How can you be so happy? I cannot be pregnant at 47!" the woman in the story reportedly told her husband when she called him with the news at his job, hilariously describing how he was pulled out of the class because he was a school teacher.

"Fuck cancer! RIP MOM. [broken pink heart]. You left us too early. We love you," I finally read the pink squiggles on the Jeep's window as it is now close and slow behind the tractor. My heart sinks.

"What would the kids say?" the woman on the radio continues relaying her conversation with her husband, referring to their two teenagers. I already know what this woman's story will end with - no one shares the stories of abortion on Moth Radio Hour, even in the program about fears.

I am still looking at the pink text on the Jeep, clearly written by a young woman, with its cursive hooks and elaborate squiggles. I am trying to picture her, perhaps a high school or college student losing her mother to cancer so young. Is she driving the car? I can't tell from behind.

"To be honest, I was hoping that I would lose this baby," the woman on the radio continued. "Late pregnancies like mine are very risky and result in miscarriages too often. But when my doctor showed me the images of the perfectly healthy girl, I knew we both would be alright. My fears were gone."

I am literally squeezed between two incredible and at the same time not unusual human stories - a story of death coming through my eyes and the story of birth I'm absorbing through my ears. I'm not sure if my neurons are happy at the moment, but they must be firing at their triple capacity because my eyes well up. I'm completely overwhelmed, feeling for both the girl who lost her mother and the woman who birthed her daughter at 47.

"Kathreen Grace is 10 now. I cannot imagine my life without her," the woman concludes her story. "And she believes I'm her soulmate."

The tractor finally turns left and we speed up. Suddenly, my GPS is screaming at me, "in 500 hundred feet, turn right!" I nearly missed my turn. Luckily, there's a red light ahead. I signal the lane change and pull up next to the Jeep. I look at the driver, and at this point my eyes are streaming tears. I see a guy in his mid-40s, looking very much like a famous actor I like.

I give him a faint smile and put my right hand to my heart. I don't have to stand there as there's no incoming traffic and I can just turn right on red. But I felt it was important to show him some empathy. He tilts his head to the right, looking at me, gives me a faint smile back, nods and puts his left hand to his heart.

"It must have been his daughter who wrote on the Jeep," I think to myself. The car behind me honks at me to turn. The light changes to green and we drive off in different directions.