I would walk silently through the door of my mother’s room, pausing a moment for my eyes to adjust to the shadowy shapes. My mother would be lying in bed, and she’d turn her head to look, her stare at first distant, before she recognized me and began pulling herself out of the thick, impenetrable fog. Somehow, each time, she summoned the energy to smile, and I knew that it was not some magic from the flower that brought it about but rather something arising from my mother herself. Some source deep within her I could not reach. I was at once awed by this well of strength and terrified that it might dry up.