After volunteering at the school, it’s Home for lunch, followed by my afternoon errands, which include a trip to the market and pharmacy, and after checking the weather, I add afternoon walk, and then it’s back to my apartment for the evening, which I’ve blocked off for reading. Sometimes it feels pointless because I can’t recall what I’ve just read, but I still find the act of reading soothing and normal.

I sigh and lean back to survey my preparation. It’s a full schedule that fills me with a sense of accomplishment as I set my reminders and make my shopping lists. I should be content with this level of preparation; instead, I feel an expanding emptiness. My arms wrap across my stomach, and I wait for the sensation to pass.

Before it does, there is a knock on my door, and a woman stands opposite me. I grip the doorknob hard, blink fast. She is older, thinner, but with the same dark-blue eyes and thick chestnut hair I remember, even if gray strands run through it. “Mom?”

She hands me a foil-wrapped plate with a note on top and a quote.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences. —Eleanor Roosevelt

I live in Whittier, I’m sober, and I love you, Claire. You amaze me.

The words blur but I don’t look up. She doesn’t get to see me cry.

“Part of my recovery has been to learn how to live in the moment.” Her voice is warm honey, and hearing it, I am six years old again, loved and important to her, and it weakens my resolve to act like I don’t care.

I try to keep my face impassive, hard. “What do you mean?”

Lines crease the skin in her forehead. She is older and beautiful in a quiet way that comes with age. “My father was a hard man, Claire. But I had to hit the darkest, rockiest bottom to realize that his demons didn’t have to be mine.” She wrings her hands, nervous, and I soften. Dad has said as much to me. “In recovery, I learned how to stop letting the past define the person I am now.” She tilts her head. “I know that you think you have to compensate for all that you’ve lost. But I want you to know that the person you are right now, at this exact moment, is beautiful and perfect and exactly right.” She taps the note card. “Eleanor was a wise woman.”