An Open-Letter to my Hero

Remember my third-grade candy sale? We walked miles around Queens, NY, trying to get as many orders as possible to win the grand prize. I ended up with over $700 in sales. But my mother took the money and bought drugs with it.

You replaced every dollar, and I won a brand-new Hollie Hobbie Dirt Bike.

You spent hours teaching me how to fold a fitted sheet and use chopsticks. I am still awful at both. But if my life ever depended on doing either perfectly, given enough time, I would probably survive based on your training.

When you realized I was having my tonsils removed the same week as your wedding, you postponed it.

As a child, this was the first time I ever experienced an adult make a significant sacrifice of their time, to support me in a non-emergent situation.

After my surgery, you were the first person I saw in recovery.

Neither of us will ever forget the day I ran into a parked car window and chipped my front tooth. You helped me search for it all night, in 4 feet of snow.

Even though we did not find it, you convinced me that my smile was prettier without it.

Eating a steak with any sign of blood was disgusting to me, until the summer of 1986. We were at Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan when you forced me to taste a medium-rare ribeye, and it was incredible!

Since that day, I never cooked or ordered another steak prepared well-done.

When I moved into my first apartment, I found out a girl my same age got killed in the complex next door. I was both devastated and shook over my security. You assured me that I would be fine.

For two months straight, after moving in, you stayed on the phone with me every night until I fell asleep. Even though most nights it was after midnight and you had to get up at 5 am for work.

On my wedding day, minutes before walking down the aisle, you pulled me aside and asked if I still felt one hundred percent sure about getting married.

You said if I changed my mind, it was okay, that you would tell everyone to go home and hide me away in your Costa Rica Vacation Home until I was ready to face the world.

You were serious. You always had my back.

I still laugh at how anxious I was to take my 8-week-year-old to the grocery store for the first time. It was such a massive ordeal for me, and I was terrified over how he might react, and even more panicked by how I would if he spiraled out of control.

You were in a taxi headed home after an exhausting 18-hour flight from Morocco. I will never forget, as we were texting, I turned down the produce aisle, and there you were smiling between the bananas and bagged salads screaming my name.

You taught me that blood isn't always thicker than water. And that there will be people in my life who would love me more than a family member and know how to show it; the way you do.

No one ever told me I was dumb. But you were the first person in my life to say to me I was smart. You helped me figure out what I did not want to be in life and more importantly, who I wanted to become and how to get there.

You were the person who told me that everyone does not deserve my transparency. And that sometimes you have to hide who you are, to protect who you are not.

I still have those words posted on a sticky note.

Countless times you told me that when I got older, none of the problematic situations I was going through at the time would matter to me.

You were right! I wish I had believed you sooner in life. I would have spared myself a few forehead wrinkles and then some.

Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings when I was too young to fly on my own or knew I could.

Thanks for loving and treating me like I was your own.

If I could have chosen you as my mother, I would have, hands down.

But I never had to because you were the one who chose me, and I will always love you for doing so and loving me unconditionally even though there were so many other supportive people in my life.

You are my true hero!