Though mom has been gone for almost ten years, I can see her as if she were sitting in her armchair in front of me, legs tucked beneath the purple throw.

“We don’t get to choose our moment, Mijo. We can only prepare for when it happens and how we respond is what matters. How did you respond?” Her eyes smile through bent reading glasses.

I sigh, burying my head in my hands. “I don’t know where to start.”

I reach into the dark corners of my mind, seeking a thread to pull. I can find none. Each story blurs into the other. Distant shores, foreign cities, and people. Unforgettable people, stained in my memory. Perhaps the beginning does not matter, I reason. Just that there is one.

“Dime Mijo,” she says, and I begin to tell.

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