I think I’ve passed some kind of milestone in my training for the Komen 3Day, a 60-mile, three-day festival of pink that my sister Jane and I are planning to walk in Chicago in August.

I no longer worry that I won’t make it — I’ve been clipping off 17-minute miles, which is not that much slower than I run. I’ve become comfortable with being soaked in sweat by the time I get to the end of my street, a logical by-product of training in the summer in Memphis. I haven’t lost much (any?) weight, but my clothes are beginning to fit noticeably better. I’ve read much more about what this event entails, and when I found out that the end of the walk — the 60th mile — will be at Soldier Field, I started really getting excited.

(I’m almost halfway to my fundraising goal, too. Here’s a link to my Personal Page if you’d like to help me get a little closer.)

What’s different is that I have begun to use my walks to think, really think, about why I am doing this. And what comes into my head are the faces of women I knew when we were younger, much younger, and everything was about possibility. We were studying to be doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, English professors, physical therapists. We had no doubt we would be changing the world, or at least that we’d have all kinds of options. And we were having FUN. If you don’t believe me, look at those faces in the photo with this post. (That’s Pledge Night at Theta at Northwestern, circa 1979. I’m happy to say that I still know most of the women in this photo. That’s me on the far left.)

My mother’s breast cancer changed all that. I ended up being a journalist after all, but I was no longer that carefree girl in the photo. The moment she died, on Good Friday in 1988, my childhood was over. I knew it as surely as if someone had turned a calendar page, or turned off a light.

Don’t get me wrong: I still have fun. And I have been incredibly lucky to have a terrific husband, a wonderful son, great friends and good work. But I am only now beginning to realize how awfully YOUNG I was when she died, and how much I needed her experience, advice, and unconditional love. How much I still need it.

And that is why I am walking. All the way to Soldier Field.