I found a lump on my daughter's ankle. A red, swollen knot… what I thought might be a giant mosquito bite. I questioned her, "Does it itch? Does it hurt?" And then I noticed another one on the other side of her anklebone. Round and hard, I wondered, "A spider bite?" A week went by and then two. Then one night after her bath, I realized that the two bumps were still there. I pushed on one and it swished.

That night, as I lay beside her in the queen-sized bed that we share, I wrapped my body around her as she slept. I cried as every horror went through my mind. What if it is something terrible? What if they cannot fix it? What if they will not fix it because we do not have insurance? What kind of parent doesn't have insurance? What kind of country doesn't ensure that all of its citizens can afford a doctor?

She has only ever been to our midwife and our naturopathic doctor. Because I don't have too much faith in Western medicine, she has never been to a medical doctor. What if this was a mistake? What if it is my fault? What if they have to remove her leg, how unfair would that be? What if that didn't work? What if after the fight of our lives, we came home without her to this empty bed, her books littering her bedside bookshelf, her drawings still on the wall where she taped them so lovingly above the bed? Awake I stayed, watching over her, quivering under our shared quilt.

My tortured mind wandered to our friend's two-year-old son who died of leukemia after chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. Although they live in Oregon, they had to temporarily live in Seattle for his treatment. Now they cannot even visit us because the site of the Space Needle brings all of the horror back again. There is a plaque in their hometown library that is dedicated to their son. A brass plaque I have stood and stared at as if it might hold a sign to why it happened, why we have been so lucky to escape this fate, and how they possibly get through their days with so much grief.

This life sometimes seems to be teetering on the precipice. One misstep, one wrong decision, one moment of poor judgment, or simple mindlessness and then... The power of this life and the love we have for each other causes me to freeze, to try to see into the future, to feel out what it might be like to have a loss of this magnitude. Something I could never prepare for but nonetheless sometimes allow myself to dwell upon.

Before my daughter was born, I thought that I was super-human. The world spun—and I spun with it. The doubt that this Herculean ideal would continue did not enter my psyche. Then she arrived to the world like a fiery meteor. She was my Kryptonite—my first face to face with mortality. After her birth, I stood with my husband and my midwife at my car door, and wondered how we would ever be able to drive her home. She was now outside my body, only a few hours old and already mewing for milk. Forty-five minutes away from the safety of home. How would we ever keep her alive that distance?

Of course, we arrived home with our baby, stunned but healthy. It wasn't until she was three years old when I had a momentary lapse of motherhood. Somehow, I forgot she existed. We were playing in the front yard. I ran in the house to get something quickly and somehow at the threshold of the house, the memory of her first three years escaped my brain entirely. I found myself in my house doing ordinary, single-minded things—like reading the mail. For a few minutes, I was not a mother in constant need of protecting another human being. Then I heard a car speed past out the open front door and motherhood quickly flooded back. I sprinted to the door. There she was, across the street in the neighbor's yard picking a flower. I thought I was going to throw up. All that was going through my head was her little body flat on the pavement as the flash of the black car passed. Flailing, I ran to her side. She held up a handful of blurry daffodils for me as I cursed myself.

After this incident, I imagined the worst. My mind began creating car wrecks, pool accidents, and freak incidents in birthday bouncy houses. I can picture it as if it has or is about to happen. As if at any moment, the visualization of her being thrown through the air and out of my life is completely real. Then the guilt of creating this scenario comes—a wash of horror that I am either bringing these thoughts to fruition purely through the power of my terrible, horrible thoughts or that I have some special power to see into the future.

Death has become an actual thought for my daughter as well. When we learned that my father-in-law had only a few days to live, I tried to talk to my daughter about it. She kept saying the doctors would make him better if he died. And I tried to talk her through what was going to happen and that the doctors cannot make him better. After a few minutes she was silent, then with tears falling from her eyes, she dive-bombed my body in a sob as she cried out, "But I don't want you to die." With every ounce of my being, I promised her I would not. Her translation that everyone and everything that is alive will die brought her to the full realization that I could possibly die.

I began to worry about this promise, how I will not be able to keep it forever because in reality it is out of my hands. I think about how devastating losing a mother at a young age is. What would I do if I saw it coming? What would her life be like to grow up without me? How would she adjust? Would she remember? Would she recover? Would she feel my love that I no doubt would leave behind for her?

This mortality seems to be sneaking up on me. A week ago, my youngest sister called to say they were on the way to the hospital because they thought my mom was having a heart attack. Her words barely made sense to me. My young, fifty-two-year-old mom—I could not breathe. The sobs immediately came in a gasping, choking staccato. "Stay on the line," was all I could say. Until she said, "I have to go." I never thought I would get that call. Would I recover? Would I adjust? Would I feel her love from beyond?

The other day at work, a childless woman made the statement when talking about having children, "I understand having an heir and a spare, but that's enough." Her comment shocked me. I never thought about a "spare." Does it work that way? We are not having any more children and I have come to see this as a good thing. But what if my fucked-up, horror-filled dreams did come to reality? Is that why so many people have two plus?

I am not typically morbid and even though I know worrying does not change future events, these thoughts keep returning to me, tracking me down in the middle of the night, holding me hostage, and turning my hair from red to white. I know that living in fear is no way to live your life, and honestly it comes and goes. But maybe it is my instinctual way of keeping her alive—of juggling the reality of life.

As much as I sometimes occasionally face these fears, this actually seems to make me even more aware of how lucky we are as we run full throttle into living each moment with radical gusto. These thoughts also do not keep me from letting my daughter be her rough and rumble self. I do not keep sanitizer in my bag, and I might as well not even buy shoes for her. I want her to feel free and safe. Therefore, I mostly keep the freaky fear monger tucked deep inside.

It is hard, especially since my daughter is also at the age where she wants to talk about things like what her food used to be. Every single time we eat meat, she insists we have an in-depth discussion of where the meat came from, what it used to be, how it died, and so on. One of her nightly request right now is The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown. I want her life to be light and playful but we seem to currently be analyzing this thing that has reared its head at us. This ultimate, unpredictable force we cannot seem to ignore.

Then I take a deep breath… because I do know that bumps will come and go—that we will get them checked and that we will most likely be okay. I know that I will do whatever I can to keep us safe and together for what I hope feels like forever. I also feel a little like the worrying has just begun. And although I know that one day I will have to watch as she crosses the street alone with a bump or two on her ankle, I hope that she will not see the shadow of worry cross my face and all she will see is me—happy, healthy, and waving.