Through it all, my mom was surrounded by a cloud of smoke. Oh, man, did she smoke—as much in a day as every character on Mad Men would in a season, combined. Morning, noon, and night, she had a cigarette in her mouth. On airplanes, in cars, at work—there was never a bad time to take a puff, as far as my mom was concerned. She would buy them by the carton, and if she ran out (or came close to it), she would send me to the corner store to pick her up a pack. (I couldn’t help but feel like her drug mule.) Deep down, though, I knew that it wasn’t good for her. I feared she would die of lung
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