At an age when most little girls are learning to braid their hair, my mother died. The news that my mother was dead changed my life. The change was irreversible. Life dealt me a tough hand and pushed me into the world to struggle alone as a motherless daughter. This fate would cover each of my memories.
Memories are like shadows.
They follow us everywhere we go. Some memories are clear, as though they were created yesterday rather than more than two decades ago. My clearest memory is of my father pulling alongside a curb and calling out to my brothers, sister and me while we walked to school. It was icy cold outside, a brutal winter day in Dayton, Ohio. Though our shoulders shook and our lips quivered under the weight of the hard, cold wind, my siblings and I were happy, carefree children.