The Scribe’s Gift

Angelina Yazdani, Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Honorable Mention

DNA is a meticulous scribe, ceaselessly writing the sacred text of life. In a single day, billions of replications occur, transcribing existence letter by letter without applause. Nevertheless, even the most careful hand occasionally shakes.

I did not think much about the silent labor until one night, standing in the shower, I felt a lump. I stood motionless as steam faded from the mirror, waiting for the strength to step out. I remember pondering: how can something so small feel so heavy?

Somewhere inside me, a letter smeared. The sentence was beginning to change. I did not know then that this revision would become the most unexpected gift of my life.

I was 21. My life moved fast—like water certain it would never run dry. I gobbled fast food, neglected exercise, and wore exhaustion like a badge of honor. I assumed my body would keep up.

The mammogram proved otherwise.

The doctor danced around the C-word, offering “neoplasm” instead. I understood. I had a biology degree. My mother did not. She exhaled, visibly relieved, and exclaimed, “So it’s not cancer!” I watched hope glow on her face, swallowed, then explained what the doctor could not.

The PET scan told the rest of the story. Glowing constellations appeared where there should have been darkness. I stared at the image and wondered if entire organs were supposed to light up.

“You are Stage IV,” my oncologist said flatly—clinically—her eyes fixed on the screen rather than on me. My breath caught in my throat. “This is a blessing in disguise,” she added swiftly. She explained that a new drug had been released two months prior for patients like me. Without it, my story would have ended much sooner.

I had spent years sprinting past my own life, like someone racing past a rose garden. Too hurried to notice the fragrance, too quick to feel the sun on my skin, too focused ahead to hear the leaves crunch beneath my shoes.

Cancer stopped me mid-stride.

Chemotherapy took place in a room of pale-faced strangers, all of us tethered to tubes and beeping machines, exhausted just from sitting upright. Clear liquid dripped into my veins, heavy with poison and hope. I remember glancing at the door and feeling an intense desire to run. Not to run away but forward, simply because I could. To feel my breath burn in my lungs. To remind myself I was alive.

Instead, I sat.

In that forced stillness, I noticed the world around me. I watched as someone dropped off handmade scarves, mittens, and hats for patients like me. I noticed how the sun reflected through the blinds at three in the afternoon. My nurse hummed while she slowly pushed the plunger to administer my third drug.

On my final day of chemotherapy, my friend took raw photographs of me. I looked pale, as if I had never seen the sun. When I glance at those photos now, what I notice is not fragility but attention. I am fully present, eyes open, soaking in the moment. I was no longer rushing past myself.

I smiled because I knew life would not return to how it was before—and I did not want it to.

After my first clear scan, the world sharpened. Leaves I once dreaded raking burned in garnet and scarlet. Snow I once begrudgingly shoveled melted on my tongue like sugar. Jasmine flowers I had ignored drew ants in rivers to their petals. Sunlight on my skin became something to absorb, not avoid.

The days did not change. I did.

I learned to cook during that time. It began simply, with black pepper and salt, then grew more ambitious. My husband taught me how to bloom saffron in warm water until it turned rice gold. Sumac was no longer a plant to avoid in the woods but a burnt red staple of Persian kebabs. Turmeric became sunlight I could taste. The kitchen became a laboratory for healing.

I rebuilt my strength rep by rep, moving my body not to change it but to celebrate that it could move.

I stopped assuming there would be time later.

Then my midwife placed a pink blanket in my arms. Golden Hour. I did not rush it. I memorized her: dark green eyes meeting the world for the first time, framed by long lashes curved like tiny commas. Her head was covered in her daddy’s signature thick black hair.

My daughter, Jasmine Rose, entered this world as a tiny professor of wonder, as if she had always been here, simply waiting for me to catch up. Each morning, before I am fully awake, she stretches four times without fail. I now stretch with her.

There was a time I did not believe motherhood would ever be written into my pages. Some of the drugs that saved my life threatened to erase that possibility altogether.

Every morning, when I kiss her chubby cheeks, I remember there was a time I did not know if I ever would.

I cannot protect her from miswritten letters. No one can. But I can give her the gift I received: the careful reading of life, the patience to watch each letter, each moment, form without rushing. When she pauses before our Turkish lamps, I name each shard of glass instead of hurrying her along.

With her in my arms, swaying her to sleep each night, I have memorized the creaks in the floorboards, each one guiding my steps like familiar notes in a lullaby.

Tonight, after she falls asleep, I will dance in the kitchen with my husband while the saffron blooms in warm water. At first, it will look like something wounded. Then it will turn the dish gold. The gift I received was not extra time. It was attention—the slowing of the hand that once raced across the page.

Somewhere inside us, the scribe continues its quiet work. Letters form. Cells divide. The story goes on.

This time, I am reading as it is written.