My parents, Linda and Michael, were saints in the eyes of our community. I remember Sundays at church, when people would approach my mother and stroke her arm with that look of admiring pity. “You’re a courageous mother, Linda,” they would say. “God has given you a difficult trial, but look how you take care of that girl.”
She smiled, lowered her gaze humbly, and squeezed my shoulder. “She’s my daughter. I would do anything for her.”
And they did. Oh, how they did. My father worked overtime at the warehouse to pay for my therapies, those painful and exhausting sessions that, according to the private doctors my parents hired, were “crucial to maintaining my muscle tone,” even though they never restored feeling to me. And my older sister, Emily… she sacrificed the most. Emily had a talent for art, she wanted to study in Europe, but she stayed. She stayed to help Mom bathe me, to take me to doctor’s appointments, to be the shadow of her disabled sister.
“Don’t worry, Amelia,” Emily would say when she saw me crying in frustration because I couldn’t reach a book on the high shelf. “My life is here, with you. I wouldn’t miss a thing by being in Paris.”