But the most important plate she made each year never touched our table.
I was eight the first time I noticed. I watched her fill it with the best of everything, then wrap it in foil slowly, carefully, the way you’d handle something sacred.
“Who’s that for?” I asked.
“That one’s not for us, baby,” she said. She tucked it into a grocery bag and tied the handles with the same patient care she used to lace my shoes.
At fourteen, old enough to be impatient, I asked again. “Mom. Who is it for?”
She pulled on her coat, held mine out to me, and said, “It’s for someone who needs it.”
That was all she ever said. And I never imagined that the man who received that plate would one day hand me back something I didn’t even know I’d lost.
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