My phone pinged just as I got home from the grocery that summer morning with ingredients to bake scones. A text from my 21-year-old daughter, Amy.
“Do you want to come up for a few days?” she wrote. “We can pick berries and make jam.”
Amy, the second youngest of our six children, lived in Northern California, near where she’d grown up, an eight-hour drive from our house in San Diego. Pandemic stay-at-home orders had been lifted. An invitation to enjoy one of our absolute favorite activities together? That should have made my heart sing. Instead, I set my phone on the counter and distracted myself by putting away the groceries. More than an eight-hour drive separated my daughter and me.
Amy was bright, an excellent student in high school. She’d been interested in pursuing sports medicine. After graduation, my husband, John, and I assumed she would go directly to the
