My mother collapsed in the snow carrying the steaks my husband had ordered her to buy. “Did she remember them?” Daniel asked when I called from the emergency room.

snow fell outside Mom’s kitchen window.

She sat beneath a quilt, laughing while our tenants’ children decorated gingerbread houses around the table.

When I asked whether she needed anything, she handed me a crooked little candy tree.

“Just sit with me,” she said.

So I did.

Dinner could wait.