My mother has never been the kind of woman who wastes things.
Not food.
Not money.
Not time.
And certainly not energy trying to impress people whose opinions have no real value.
I didn’t understand that about her when I was young.
It took years.
You learn the most important things about your parents slowly—not because they sit you down and explain themselves, but because you watch them long enough to finally understand what you’ve been seeing all along.
My mother’s name is Patricia Reyes.
She grew up in a
