Chasing Her Smile

It was December 21, 2020.

Olive—13 months old—sat on our kitchen floor. I’d combed her wispy blond hair carefully to the side and fanned out the skirt of her superhero dress around her chubby legs. A red cape was affixed to her back by two little squares of Velcro.

She stared at me, unsmiling.

“Ollie!” I said in an annoyingly chipper voice. “Look at Mama!”

I hated myself for that voice. But what else was there to do? Cry? Not me.

It was 6 a.m. on a Monday. Of course she wasn’t smiling. She’d be even grumpier when she realized it was another day with no breakfast.

Who knew that having cancer meant fasting so much?

Biopsy? Fasting. CT scans? Fasting. Surgery to install her chemo port? Fasting.

And how was I supposed to explain to a one-year-old that she couldn’t eat—or even drink water?

“Ollie!” I said again. “Show me that beautiful smile!”

Finally, she pursed her lips. I snapped a few pictures before scooping her up onto my hip. I handed my phone to Nick to take more pictures for the family. We had to show them all that we were, against all odds, still alive and smiling.

In a few minutes, I’d whisk Olive away to the children’s hospital, where we’d gotten “the talk” just days before. Nick would stay home with our son Logan, trying to keep life normal while everything spun out of control.

Logan was on Christmas break that week, and Nick was determined to have fun with him.

Fun. How was he going to manage that?

The not knowing was worse than knowing.

Not knowing if we could find a surgeon to remove her tumor.

Not knowing how long she could live with it inside her body.

That morning, we snapped photo after photo, hoping Olive’s frown would flip around for one of them.

I squeezed her thigh, and her chubby cheeks lifted slightly.

Click. Nick captured it—a tiny, almost-smile from our baby. That was all I needed.

I opened Facebook and posted our first update of the day: Here we go! Super Ollie reporting for chemo day #1!

Why did I need her to smile so badly?

I’m not a psychologist. I don’t really know.

There are those sick kid Facebook pages—the child in a hospital bed, slack-mouthed, tubes everywhere. That isn’t who we are.

I am the queen of silver linings—a resilient, fierce woman who slaps on lipstick and faces the day, no matter how bleak it looks.

I needed Olive to smile.

I needed hope—and to bring hope to others.

We didn’t want pity. We weren’t looking for commiseration.

I needed our people to walk beside us and remind me: You are fierce, and Olive is just as strong as you. You’ve got this!

If I worked hard enough, maybe I could reframe our story.

Did it have to be about fear and despair?

Maybe it could be about moments of pain among a backdrop of love and support.

There were so many reasons to highlight the smiles.

Really, hadn’t my life been building toward this?

Starting at 11 years old, I’d battled treatment-resistant major depression.

When I told my friends, no one believed I was suffering. Not because I lied, but because even after brutal nights, I clung to whatever brought a smile.

In my teens, it was holding hands in the rain, singing terrible duets with my best friend.

In college, it was eating greasy mall pizza and watching the weekly Magic: The Gathering tournament, laughing with the quirky locals.

I had learned how to reframe depression, clinging to every moment of light.
The lows were low, but the highs were high too.

Later, I would do the same through miscarriages, a divorce, and the heavy, silent grief that followed.

I found myself kayaking in the calm, glassy water under the relentless Florida sun, holding onto moments of peace even when my life was in tatters.

There was always something to grasp onto—if I tried hard enough.

And that morning, once again, I chased a glimmer of hope.

I squeezed a tiny smile out of my baby so I could hold it up for myself and everyone else and say: We are okay. We still have our smiles.

I looked down at Olive’s photo, missing how easy it used to be to make her laugh.
We were heading into our darkest days. It still knocks the wind out of me sometimes.

And yet…

I knew what we had to do.

We had to find the slivers of light.

We had to keep chasing those smiles.