I moved in with Grandma Doris when I was three days old. My mother, Lina, died shortly after giving birth, and my father never appeared—not once, not for a birthday, not for a school play, not even for a phone call. Grandma used to say my mother held me for three minutes before her blood pressure dropped, and that those three minutes would somehow last a lifetime. I grew up believing that.
Grandma Doris was 52 when she took me in. She worked nights as a janitor at my high school and mornings as the quiet engine that kept our little world running. She made the fluffiest pancakes every Saturday, read secondhand novels out loud in an armchair with torn seams, and somehow made life feel wide and possible even when money was tight.
