Tuition requests.
Families who needed one impossible month made slightly less impossible.
Wesley and Corinne called several times.
I answered when I wanted to.
I did not punish them.
But I stopped rescuing them from discomfort.
Maya came by one Saturday.
She stood nervously in my office doorway.
“Can I help?”
I handed her a stack of envelopes.
“Sit down.”
She smiled and took the chair across from me.
For a moment, she looked so much like Corinne had at fifteen that my chest ached.
Then I looked at Edmund’s photograph on the desk.
I had spent most of my life believing love meant protecting family from every painful consequence.
Edmund had understood something I learned much later.
Sometimes love means giving.
And sometimes it means finally refusing to let the people you love take.
