In 2001, I lost the world I knew. Twenty-five years later, I’m accidentally rebuilding it.
“I think people think you’re my mother,” my six-year-old niece whispered to me as we walked through the parking lot toward CVS.
“I think you’re right,” I said, smiling back at her impish grin that suggested we were pulling one over on the world. I had picked her up from school and was indulging her request to buy fake nails for our sleepover. She gripped my hand tightly, as a daughter would. We proudly walked through the automatic sliding doors, as one.
I don’t have children of my own, which means my niece is the beneficiary of my pent-up maternal love…
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