Dear Madré

Dear Madré,

I would normally call you BISCUITHEAD, but since this is a letter for how grateful I am to have you in my life as my adoptive mother I decided to be nice.

We first met in late January of 2016 when I first got hired at Bojangles. I was new to fast food and you were already a well loved assistant manager of the joint. Interestingly enough when we first met we weren’t close. I thought you seemed pretty strict and this was a new job I didn’t wanna mess up so I did my best to avoid you. I’m not exaggerating when I say you were kinda tough on me when we first met, but you slowly started to embrace me more when you saw I was a good worker.

As time went on in that first year we got along more and more and you eventually started calling me your work son. The day you decided to adopt me as your work son was the day everything between us changed, because from that day forward you never called me by my actual name ever again. You only ever called me “Son” as you still do to this day and I always call you “mama” or BISCUITHEAD because I used to say that your head looked like one of the biscuits I would bake at work.

I appreciated your motherhood so much and not just for me, but on behalf of our entire work family. You were always there for all of us no matter what. When ever one of our young people graduated you made sure to have a workplace party for them and you went to their graduations. You were the work mother who genuinely cares.

I’m glad to say I saw your caring heart with me more than anything. When I first started working at Bojangles I didn’t have a car and when we became close you always gave me a ride to work and a ride home until I got my own car. A difficult time for me was when you had your knee injury and you were on medical leave for a few months. In all that time away you check up on me all the time and whenever I was going through something you made sure I was okay. By this time you were not just my work mother, you had become my adoptive mother in life in general.

You even met my adoptive mother from church, Nicole and you two became good friends, I was glad for that. Annoyingly enough you had a funny relationship with my dad. You two always made me sick joking around about how much you two had a crush on each other. Luckily no relationship ever manifested between you two.

One night when you were taking me home after we had a graduation party for one of our young coworkers I told you about how I was getting back in school and I asked you were you gonna come to my graduation and you shook your head yes with a serious look on your face. Two years later you kept your word and sat at the front row of my college graduation cheering me on as I accepting my associates degree.

Skip ahead to today and we both have long moved on from Bojangles to better places of employment. Nevertheless we are still mother and son. Your son and daughter are my siblings, We talk all the time, I pay you visits and on the day you married the love of your life last year I was an usher in your wedding. Dear mama Christal, I am forever thankful to be your son and I am forever grateful to have you as my adoptive mother.

~Dedicated to my adoptive mother, Christal Henry.