Walking to school my daughter looks worried. She’s watching my feet to make sure I don’t trip. She doesn’t want me out in the cold playground. She keeps a hand on my wheelchair. She wants to make everything ok.
We watch the SU2C BakeOff. She mishears the advert and says, it’s not 1 or 2 of us that get cancer, it’s lots of us.
I hardly know what to say when she asks if I’ll always be poorly or when I’ll get a new boobie. When she says, ‘At least you’re not having chemo!’
She doesn’t fuss when she needs an injection, when I have a blood test, when she gets chickenpox. But a moment of peril in a film sends her under the blanket. She doesn’t want to see scary things because it makes her worry about me. Because real life is scary enough.
How to walk the tricky line between protecting and encouraging her? Being honest without being frightening.
‘I’m fine right now,’ I say. But I’m in no rush to leave her with a babysitter or make her fall asleep in her own bed. She can be brave about a grazed knee but she doesn’t need to be brave about having a mum with cancer.
These Boobs Were Made For Talking 