My mom raised me alone.
When I was a child, that mostly meant she was constantly busy—always moving, always doing just one more thing before she could rest.
She worked long shifts at a small diner on the edge of town. Most evenings she came home exhausted, kicked off her shoes, and groaned, “Lord, my feet are suing me.”
I always burst out laughing. I was six years old, and to me that was the funniest sentence ever spoken.
We didn’t have much money, but somehow my mom had a gift for making our life feel steady and safe.
Then came the winter that I still remember clearly.
The old house we lived in seemed to let the wind slip through every crack in the walls. Heating bills kept climbing, and I was old enough to notice how my mom would stare at envelopes for a long time before opening them.
One evening I walked into the kitchen and saw piles of old clothes spread across the table and floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She held up a square of red fabric cut from an old sweatshirt.
“Making us a quilt.”
“Out of old clothes?”
She smiled.
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