The first stitch my mother ever taught me was simple. “Needles remember gentle hands,” she used to say whenever I tugged the thread too hard. “If you force them, they’ll fight back.” I never understood what she meant until years later, standing alone in my bedroom with tears running down my face while holding the last thing she had ever made for me.

moved into the living room.

She laid soft satin across my knees.

“Feel that.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’ll be yours.”

I swallowed.

“Mom…”

She interrupted me.

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Yes, you were.”

She smiled sadly.

“You were going to tell me I don’t have enough energy.”

I looked away.

She chuckled.

“I know.”

For the next three months our evenings continue reading …