My preschooler and I are so often at cross-purposes that I feel like we are from different universes. In hers, sleeping through the night, currently, is not condoned and may actually be punishable by law. Goldfish crackers are a nutritious lunch. Pants, even outside, are optional. In my constellation, on the other hand, sleeping an entire night without an interruption is my fondest dream come true. To eat lunch sitting down, and not over a counter while I stir the ingredients for that night's dinner, would be heavenly. The good news is that I do still wear pants, but I wouldn't be surprised if that luxury is next to go.

Day after day (and night after middle-of-the-night) we try our best to meet somewhere in the middle, MJ and me. But a few weeks ago, as I lay on the floor outside her partially opened bedroom door at midnight and waited for her to hop out of bed for the third time (at which point I would plop her back in), it occurred to me that, no matter how far we parents advance in years, we still feel the things we first felt as children.

When I first found a lump, which recently, and thankfully, was called benign, it was morning. It was the start of another frenzied day with a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, and there was no time to let my thoughts drift. I called the doctor, made an appointment and put the problem aside. But by bedtime that night, and over the course of many nights over the next three weeks as I visited one doctor and then another and waited for one test result or another, I grew more nervous, a feeling that vanished during the busyness of day and even as a nurse cheekily joked during a needle biopsy that I would be the first person in my group of friends to have my "breast vacuumed."

When the house is quiet and dark, it's easiest to let your thoughts stray to places just as quiet and dark. Our worries follow us to sleep. When MJ wakes in the middle of the night, the first thing she notices is that she is alone. As irrational as it is for her to believe that she is unsafe because she doesn't immediately see one of her parents, the fear is there, and she lets it play out until she comes looking for us, saying that she had searched around and we had "disappeared. You keep disappearing."

This is what she told me the night I was waiting for her outside her bedroom. Dozens of nights before this, bowed by sleep deprivation, I might have vainly explained why this was silly, and why she needed her rest. But on this night, I knew how she felt. When you're the daughter of a breast cancer survivor and you find a lump, you have certain images in your mind and a certain feeling in your heart, a path and process to follow before you can ever consider the word "benign." There is a kind of quiet preparation for the opposite diagnosis, should it come. Your mind is capable of great leaps, especially before the sun rises. And so you lay down next to your daughter and hope it's nothing, and you watch her drift safely back to sleep, grateful for any long night you can spend with her. You make a promise to yourself, which will be easier said than kept, that you will savor all these moments more properly from here on out.

And the next morning, with sunlight streaming through her windows, your frightened peanut once again becomes the brave girl who doesn't need anyone to do anything. "I can do it myself," she'll tell you all day long. And when the purpose of the day once again sets in, "benign" begins to sound about right to you, too.

MJ and I disagree on many things during our days together, from what kind of cereal she should eat to whether she should redecorate the walls with a ballpoint pen. It's the nature of the parenting business. But the truth is that, as grown-up as we sometimes believe ourselves to be, whether in daylight or moonlight, we are more like our children than we think.

Beth appears on Tuesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Beth at her blog MotherBunker.