Last night a woman about my age sat in a hospital somewhere in the Washington area and waited helplessly as surgeons performed a kidney transplant on her daughter.

    I wonder how she's dealt with the unbearable fear. How do you face that your child might die before you, the thorn that comes with the rose of being a parent?

    From the moment you first feel life stir in your belly it's there, that fear.

    You can see the life swell within you, flesh of your flesh. In the last weeks you feel the push of a tiny star of a hand, the impossibly small block of a foot kick own skin. You think of all the ways a child can be damaged ... you don't dare say it out loud but in your heart you worry:

    Make everything right. Make everything right.

    When they hand you your child, the brand new baby, you wait until everyone has left the room and then you unwrap her. You study every tiny inch of that impossibly small body, looking for something the doctor may have missed.

    Make everything right. Make everything right.

    But sometimes it's not.

    Last night a woman about my age waited in a hospital.

    I hope it went right.