“Too bad. I carried you for nine months. I get to hug you forever.”
He laughed and hugged me back just as tight.
Before I left, he walked me to the car.
“Hey Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“That sentence I said at graduation? I meant every word. And I’ll say it again every time someone tries to put you in the back.”
I smiled, cupping his face in my hands.
“You already brought the whole world to its feet for me, mijo. Now go conquer it.”
As I drove away, I glanced in the rearview mirror. My boy — no, my young man — stood tall, waving until I turned the corner.
I whispered to myself the same thing I’d said in the mirror the day I bought that blue dress:
“Michael is going to think his mom looks beautiful… because she raised a son who knows exactly who his mother is.”
And that, more than any seat in any auditorium, was the greatest victory of my life.
**The End.**
