The Emergency

What seemed a slight tremor in her seven-year-old daughter's hand rapidly became a sign of something much more serious. Novelist Allegra Goodman recalls the night that changed her life.

- By Allegra Goodman

My mother, Madeleine, was a scientist, but she was also superstitious. Never open an umbrella in the house! Never put shoes on the table. She believed in luck—especially bad luck. She was sweet but tough. Politic, but scarily direct. Madeleine was a feminist and a dancer and such a good baker that people used to cry when they tasted her Sacher torte and mandelbrot. She was a virtuoso knitter; my sister and father still treasure the exquisite fisherman’s sweaters she made them. She was tall and elegant, and always wore high heels. She was also a fighter, the director of women’s studies at the University of Hawaii, where her program was constantly on the block for budget cuts. My mother became the vice president of academic affairs before Vanderbilt hired her away as its first woman dean of arts and sciences. She did a lot before a brain tumor took her life at 51. I often wish I could be more like her. I cannot bake as well as she did, nor can I dance. I never learned to knit, although my mother tried to teach me. I am a novelist, no administrator. But I have a daughter named Miranda, and while Madeleine never had a chance to meet her, I see my mother in her.