“I am so scared.

I didn’t know how to tell you.

I didn’t know how to say it out loud.

I didn’t know how to let you see me like this.” And I held my husband in a garden full of white blossom, and I understood that the bravest thing he had ever done was not any surgery he had ever performed.

It was standing here, now, letting me see him afraid.

We have strange ideas about courage, I think, especially where men are concerned.