So glorious was the Ross that when I accepted a magazine assignment to travel to the Antarctic Peninsula in 2019, I had snobbishly low expectations. The peninsula is separated from South America only by the relatively narrow 600-mile Drake Passage, and despite the Drake’s notoriously stormy weather, it remains by far the most accessible part of Antarctica and the destination for an overwhelming majority of visitors. I thought of it as Antarctica Lite. But I could bring a guest. By then my mother had been living with chronic lymphocytic leukemia for 11 years, and despite a recent setback, she really wanted to go. Her doctor timed her treatments so she could be away for a month, time we spent mostly on a cruise ship, bouncing down the Chilean coast to Antarctica and back up to Buenos Aires.