On a quiet Tuesday afternoon, my mom called when she should have been teaching. Her voice was steady, but the words weren’t: my father had reached out after ten years of silence. The same man who walked away while she was eight months pregnant now wanted to “come home.” Around our kitchen table, my siblings pretended not to listen as she explained that he said he had made mistakes and missed us. She believed in forgiveness. I believed in remembering. There’s a difference between letting go of anger and reopening the door to someone who once closed it behind him without looking back.
I still see the night he left—Bible in hand, speaking about “new seasons” and “faith,” never saying plainly that he was leaving his wife and ten children for someone else. What followed were years of tight budgets, secondhand clothes, and a mother who worked nights cleaning offices before studying at dawn. He sent occasional messages about trust and patience, but rarely support. Meanwhile, she built a life from grit and grace, taking one community college class at a time until textbooks replaced overdue notices on our table. She never let us speak hate into the air. “Don’t let his choices poison you,” she would say.