Of all the gifts my mother gave me, the best one was letting me have the life she had wanted for herself. That life, I learned as a teenager, could involve marriage, but something else was to come first. It was college, followed by a "good job." Later, as my mother promised, I'd have plenty of time for a family of my own.
It was a powerful aspiration and a surprising one, given the circumstances of my upbringing. Except for an uncle who'd spent a year in college, no one else in my family had even gone past high school....
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