I had just finished watching The Lion King and I was just about to leave the theatre when a beautiful voice called out to me.
It was my best friend’s mom.
“Hi, I’m so happy to see you,” she said, waving her hand.
“How are you?”
I told her I was okay.
She smiled and waved me back to the theatre.
Afterward, I asked her if she’d been able to find her.
I’m glad you did.
She said she’d met my grandmother and aunt at her grandmother’s funeral a few years earlier.
They had been looking for her.
“She’s been looking all over New Zealand,” I told her.
She laughed and replied, “We don’t know where we’re going to find you.”
She went on to tell me how she’s had to search for a place to live, how she’d lost her job because of her diabetes, how her boyfriend had left her because of what he’d done to her.
It was a little hard to listen to, but she had told me all of this to help me understand why my mom was sad and why she’d found a way to look for her, to help my dad find his way back.
When I asked what it meant to be able to make her feel better, she paused.
“It’s like we have a connection with each other,” she continued.
“We can’t always be there.
It’s not a comfort we have.
If you know someone, I promise you, it doesn’t hurt to let them know.”
She told me she has no regrets and that she is proud of the things she has done for me.
I told my mom that she’s proud of me.
She smiled.
I asked if I could hug her.
We hugged.
It is hard to tell people you love them when you don’t even know them.
My mom has been in a long, long dark place.
I have loved my mom for 10 months, since the day I met her.
I was 15 when I first met her, and I’ve been with her ever since.
We were both in high school, so we were never much closer than a few words.
We met at the same school, and they were both pretty sweet.
She had a girlfriend at the time, and we dated for about a year.
But that’s not how it started.
I was a freshman at high school when I met my mom.
She worked in the kitchen at the family home, and she had been in the restaurant business for a few months by that point.
I would go on trips to visit her.
On a few occasions, we’d go out and have lunch together.
But when she came home, we didn’t talk for a year, and for the next year, we were just friends.
Then, after I graduated, she told me that she was going to move to Hawaii and work as a server at a restaurant.
She moved into her mom’s house and started living there, and it was pretty crazy.
We’d spend every weekend together, and then on my birthday, my mom would come home from work to find me at my desk, writing on my whiteboard.
I loved her so much that I would stay up late writing her letters.
She would be so proud of us.
We would eat dinner together and talk about things.
But my mom knew my dad would never be able and wouldn’t let her spend time with me, so I was the one who had to spend the majority of my time with my dad.
When I finally moved in with my mom, we got along really well, but I was still pretty far away from my mom’s.
I wasn’t very outgoing, I wasn�t very happy with myself, and my mom didn’t understand why.
I didn’t even understand what I was doing.
I needed to figure things out, she would tell me.
But she couldn�t, and so I kept moving forward.
When she moved back into the home, I knew I had to stop going to the restaurant.
I stopped buying my mom�s stuff and started spending my money on my own things.
I started cooking for myself.
I went out for dinner with friends and bought my own food, and when I was done, I put everything in a plastic bag and left.
I didn’t know how to stop it, but when I did, I realized how crazy I was.
I had become so self-centered.
I hated it.
My mom has never been a strict eater.
She never has been.
I’ve never had to eat out. She doesn�t have a kitchen, so she doesn�T have to.
But I didn�t think about the fact that I didn?t know how.
I just had to learn how to enjoy life, how to eat well, how not to be rude.