“My mother’s friends say that I’m just like her. She died of breast cancer when I was two years old. I had to grow up fast because my father was always working and seldom around. I was doing my own laundry at the age of seven. I figured the puberty thing out on my own. During high school, I’d leave for entire weekends without my dad even asking where I’d been. Then one year at Thanksgiving, my aunt told me that my mother had left me a letter and a video. She got so angry when I told her I’d never gotten it. I confronted my Dad about it, and he said that he ‘remembered something like that.’ He drove me to a safety deposit box—but the box was empty. He couldn’t remember what happened. He had one job. One thing that would mean more to me than anything else, and he couldn’t do it. My mom’s friends always tell me: ‘She would be so proud of you,’ or ‘She was so in love with you. But that’s not the same. It’s not the same as something directly from her. Something she made especially for me. Just one thing that actually says: ‘This is how much I love you.’”
