“Some homes just have one parent, Leo,” I said.
“I know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a mother.”
I turned off the faucet.
“As long as we have each other, we have everything we need.”
It wasn’t an answer.
Even at six years old, Leo understood that.
But he also understood that I wasn’t going to say anything more.
I never told him I believed his mother had rejected him because of his disability.
I couldn’t place that wound inside him.
As far as Leo knew, he was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me.
Because he was.
Raising him wasn’t easy.
There were nights when I cried after he fell asleep because I was afraid I wasn’t enough.
There were mornings when he refused to get dressed.
There were afternoons spent sitting in therapy rooms.
There were evenings when I struggled through forms filled with language no parent should have to learn alone.
Then came the victories.
His first clear sentence.
His first day at school.
The first time he tied his own shoes.
The school play where he forgot his line, laughed, and improvised something so funny that the audience applauded.
If it hadn’t been for our elderly neighbor, Johnson, I don’t know how I would have made it through.
She lived across the hall and had already been there before Goldi and I moved into the building.
The morning after Goldi left, Johnson knocked on my door with soup in her hands.
She looked at me once and said, “I can hear that baby crying all day and night. You need sleep.”
Before I could protest, she took Leo from my arms with the confidence of someone who had raised four children.
From then on, she became part of our family.
She cared for Leo when I worked late. She sat beside me during his surgeries and held my hand whenever the doctor came out.
She never missed a birthday or school play.
Leo started calling her Grandma Johnson long before he understood that she wasn’t actually related to us.
Yesterday, the three of us celebrated his 18th birthday.
We didn’t organize anything fancy.
There was only homemade lasagna, chocolate cake, and 18 candles that nearly triggered the smoke detector.
Leo wore a paper crown Johnson had bought.
