“I’m so sorry,” Mom says. “For not being a better mother, for not being a better daughter, for missing Lao Ye’s funeral… all of it. But I was trying. You have to believe me.” I reach for her hands and give her an important spelling lesson under the velvet sky. “I used to feel guilty too,” I tell Mom. “But then I learned that guilt is spelled with an i. And that I is just as important.”
