what to do.
Then I saw my mother.
Her name is Patricia.
Everyone calls her Pat.
She was standing near the doors to the reception hall.
She had seen everything.
My mother had paid for her portion of the wedding using money from a savings account she opened when I was eleven.
For twenty-one years, she had put something into that account every month.
Sometimes more.
Sometimes less.
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But she never stopped.
When she finally told me about it before the wedding, I cried in her kitchen.
She simply patted my hand and said,
“I’ve been looking for something worth spending it on.”
That money represented decades of her life.
And now she was standing across the room watching Linda stuff wedding envelopes into a bag.
Our eyes met.
I expected my mother to come over.
Instead, she gave me one small shake of her head.
Don’t.
