She let a giggle escape as she slid her fists together. I raised her elbow to line up with her ear and the giggle erupted into an outburst of laughter. Her knees went soft and she lost her stance. I looked over at her baseball coach who was laughing himself. Her laughter was infectious. It was hard to get serious with her. “OK, Jordan, ” I said. “Let’s hit the ball out of the park.

She’s eccentric; the kind of girl who one day might wear satin jumpsuits to cocktail parties. She carries herself with a bubbling coolness, a contradiction of temperament. One moment she is detached as a Japanese dowager, the next vying for the gasp of an audience. Some might label her dramatic. She’d probably agree. She relishes exhibition. She moves animated, flittering in a flattened world, pushing her will upon it with an infectious charm, a large part of why I love her.

Three months have passed since Jordan was diagnosed with cancer, and most people have no idea there’s anything wrong with her at all. The hair has grown back around the area of her surgery, concealing the crescent scar behind her left ear. The color has returned to her skin and her eyes are full of life. She giggles, jumps, climbs and colors, just like other kids. It is easy for all around her to dismiss reality.

It was the smallest tooth I’ve ever seen. Jordan held it proudly in the palm of her hand. It was a long-time coming, this one. Lucas began losing his baby teeth at five, but Jordan has been stingy with hers. 2:45 pm was the exact time of separation, duly noted by her kindergarten teacher. Poetically, she marks this rite of passage on the same day as another milestone in her life: the final day of her first chemotherapy cycle.

The big blonde kid, number 9, smashed through our middle line. I think they called him Riley. He was unusually tall. A parent from the sideline joked that he drove himself to the game. He was fast, too, though he didn’t look it. He sped past our center and fixed his sights on our goal. Our defenders, only two in range, scrambled into position. My eyes swept the field in search of support.