The Courage of Children: Boston and Beyond XXXIII

SERENA HARU ROSENTHAL
SCOTT LARIVEE, TEACHER
Mary Lyon K-8 School, Boston, MA
I think that in order to show courage, you need to have fear in the first place.
You have to be scared of whatever you’re going through, so that you can show
how brave you can be. It’s when it feels like your life itself is crumbling apart
and you just keep persevering through it. Courage isn’t only shown by a
singular person in their own private story; it can be about the person having
someone who perseveres with them, someone who stays by their side even when
they want to give up. Someone who goes through all of the hardships, fear, and
pain alongside a person they cherish, care for, and love with all of their heart.
For me, I feel as though I have been going through my mom’s cancer alongside
her. I feel like it’s us against our shared struggles.
I can’t quite remember what day it all started. It was as if my entire life just
started falling apart, pieces of bad news storming towards me one by one. I
remember when I first thought of the possibility of my mom being in danger.
It was in July of 2023, at my summer camp. It feels as if it were only yesterday
when she sat me down during breakfast, sharing the worst news of my life.
Let me give you some context. Before this all started, we already knew that my
mom had this huge bump in her armpit, and later on, we were told it was
actually a cyst. This news was bad enough as it was. But little did I know, that
was just the beginning.
I can still hear her exact words, hissing in my ears: “My bump might not be a
cyst...” I felt my heart drop. “There’s a possibility of it being a cancerous tumor,
Haru...” From that moment on, I felt like my whole world was just crumbling,
as if I was falling into a deep pit of disappearance and darkness. Tears slowly
trickled down my face as my vision became blurry. I could see a hint of guilt on
her face and quickly wiped my tears away. We hugged, and from that moment
on, I promised myself that I would stay strong, even when I was terrified of
what might happen. I would have to find courage inside of my cloud of fear,
even if all I wanted to do was crawl into a ball and never leave my room.
A few weeks later, my family and I were in Japan, and we still hadn’t found out
if my mom’s cyst was indeed cancerous—or at least, that’s what I thought. But
as time sped by, I started noticing several different suspicious things going on,
such as my parents and sister talking to each other in private and my mom
getting a bunch of phone calls. It had made my trip to my mom’s hometown
“COURAGE CAN
BE SHOWN BY THE
PERSON WHO’S
GOING THROUGH
SOMETHING, BUT
ALSO BY THE PERSON
WHO IS PERSEVERING
ALONGSIDE THEM.”
more morbid, and it was making the mood of my summer lower and lower.
Then, I walked into my parents’ room, and my mom was calling one of her
colleagues. I only had to hear a few words before I caught onto what was going
on, what secret my family was keeping. My throat got dry as I heard her
whisper, “How do I tell Haru?” She then looked at me and sighed as she told
me to sit down on the bed next to her. She proceeded to tell me the one thing
I didn’t want to hear: “I have breast cancer.” Those words changed my life
forever. Things I found cheerful began to darken, and everything seemed as
though it were in black and white. But I had to persevere. I had to show her
that I could be strong. For her, for my family, for everyone. The bad news
changed practically everything, particularly how I was going to live for the
rest of my life.
After that summer, my life did change, terribly. Whenever someone found out
about my family’s situation, they would either only be nice to me because of it,
or even worse, bring it up during times that it wasn’t relevant. I felt like the
realness of what was going on wasn’t occurring to me, as if I couldn’t accept
how much I was going through. I realized eventually that I was focusing on my
mom so much that I had been denying how I was truly feeling myself. Or at
least, that’s what my therapist told me: that it was right to be worried and
stressed about my mom, but also right to consider how it was affecting my life
as a sixth grader. Constant loneliness shadowed my entire household, as I
usually ate alone, walked alone, and did most things by myself. But I always
kept a smile on my face and a positive attitude, no matter what. Even if this new
way of living made it so that I couldn’t do what other kids my age could, even
if it meant not being able to tell someone my own troubles or how I felt, and
especially if it meant that I would have to sacrifice everything I had in order to
care for my mom, persevering through everything. During the entire time, I
wasn’t the only one in my family who was showing courage. I wasn’t the only
THE COURAGE OF CHILDREN: BOSTON AND BEYOND
VOLUME XXXIII
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