I knew they tried not to compare the two of us, but it was just an inevitable, unspoken thing. I felt sort of like Supergirl’s younger brother—no X-ray vision, couldn’t fly, and was much slower than a speeding bullet. Not that I was a problem for my parents—I did well in school and sports and I had lots of friends—but I was no superhero fighting crime or evil super-villains, either.

Beth slowed the car down as we entered JFK Inter-national Airport. “Which terminal?”

“Three. Thai Airways,” my father said. “Are you going to drop us off or come inside?”

“I’m going to park. I want to come inside and see you off—you know, wave goodbye.”

My mother reached over from the back seat and gave Beth’s shoulder a little squeeze.

“Just go to short-term parking,” my father said. “I want you back on the road before the weather gets any worse.”

“I’ll be fine,” Beth said.

“I know you’ll be fine. Just indulge me on this, okay?”

My sister swung into a parking space. My father got out and fed the meter and I climbed out to start getting the luggage out of the trunk. It was cold and the wind was whipping the snow around. It probably wasn’t falling as much as it was blowing. My father came around to help with the luggage while my sister offered my mother her arm and helped her toward the shelter of the terminal. I watched her move, slowly but steadily. I was looking for some telltale sign that it was starting to pass again, or that her symptoms were getting worse.

“She’s going to be okay,” my father said.

“I know. Beth can take care of herself.”

“I meant your mother.”

Why did it still surprise me that he could read my mind?

“She’s already going into remission. I can tell,” he said.

I wanted to believe him. I really did.

He pulled the last of the bags out of the trunk and we started to wheel them into the terminal. I tried to move quickly. It was cold and I wasn’t dressed for it. None of us was, except Beth. We always left our winter coats and boots behind rather than take them with us on these trips. Better a mad dash in the cold than looking like a bunch of Eskimos lost in the tropics when we arrived.

My mother had navigated the slippery path with-out falling. She hadn’t fallen in days. Maybe my father was right, but I just couldn’t tell. Multiple Sclerosis was tricky like that. There were so many little symptoms—being tired, dropping things, losing your balance. Those things happened to everybody sometimes—no big deal—but in an MS sufferer they could mean the disease was getting worse. We’d learned that Multiple Sclerosis is an auto immune disease that affects your body’s whole central nervous system. My mother’s type of MS was called “relapsing-remitting.” She could have an episode and then, almost like magic, all the symptoms might fade away, and it would be like she didn’t even have MS, or like she was cured. It could be that way for months. Once it had lasted almost two years. I’d even forgotten she had it that time.