Some days, she couldn’t believe how far she’d come.
“The need was already there,” she said. “I just made space for it.”
Cyren nodded, taking that in.
“So you just… kept going?”
“I had to,” Mama Dot replied. “Once you see it, and the change, you can’t unsee it.”
She moved past Cyren, grabbed a towel, and wiped her hands, then continued.
“I cleaned out my dining room first, then my spare room. I started keeping toiletries, things folks needed but didn’t always have. Then people started bringing stuff. I received so many donations, and the word continued to spread.”
Cyren glanced around the space again, seeing it differently now.There are truly some good people in this world,she thought.
“Then, this kind woman and her husband gifted me this place,” Mama Dot said, lightly gesturing around them. “And I made sure I honored it.”
Cyren hesitated before asking her next question. “Sorry if I’m being too nosy, but did something happen for you to do all of this?” she asked. “Like, not just feed people, but really go the extra mile. You could’ve stopped at just serving food.”
Mama Dot nodded. “Mhm. I could’ve, but I knew I had a deeper purpose, thanks to my son.”
She quieted for a second, gathering her thoughts. “He needed more than I could give him at the time. I was working, surviving, doing what I thought was enough. But sometimes, it’s not.”
Cyren swallowed.
“He got caught up and made a bad decision that changed a lot of lives, including his own.”
“Is he... still with us?” Cyren mumbled, almost afraid to ask.
“Yeah, he’s still here. But the person’s life he took while drunk driving isn’t.”
Bile rose in Cyren’s throat. Any mention of a car crash, reckless driving, or the police made her sick to her stomach. The first year after Nicole passed away, she hated stopping at red lights and still tried to avoid them as best as she could.
Any words or pictures linked to how she lost her mother were a trigger, and parts of her were still angry. Cyren felt a hint of anger towards Mama Dot’s son, even though she didn’t know him. Grief... it had no boundaries.
Mama Dot had worked two jobs for most of her life as a cafeteria worker by day and an office cleaner by night. Her husband lost his life early, before her son was a teenager, to mistaken identity. An arrest had been made, but the damage had already been done.
Over the years, she watched the block shift. There was more violence, more broken homes, more kids raising themselves.Mama Dot felt like she was living in a twilight zone, and she had to do something, anything, to keep going.
“I’m sure that was so much for you to take on,” Cyren said, sadly.
“It certainly was, but you know what they say about life? When it gives you lemons, you make the best lemonade you can.”
Reciting the idiom lightened the gloomy mood. There’d been court dates, long drives to places Mama Dot didn’t know the routes to, phone calls that came with time limits, and bonds broken. Her pain aged her without permission and taught her to keep going anyway. What else could she do?
“My baby needed somebody to slow him down,” Mama Dot continued. “Needed somebody to sit with him, talk to him, see what he was really going through. And I thought I was doing that… but I was tired. Tired of working and trying to keep everything together.”
Cyren felt it more than she understood it.
Mama Dot gave a small, knowing smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Life doesn’t always give you the time you think you have. That’s why you have to live each day like it’s your last.”
Cyren’s chest tightened, while Mama Dot reached for a towel and folded it.
“So when everything happened, I had a choice. I could sit in that grief, or I could do something with it.”
Her eyes lifted to Cyren’s, wanting her to really feel what she was saying.
“I chose to pour it somewhere. Yes, losing my son to the system broke something in me, but it also awakened something deeper,” Mama Dot admitted with the utmost strength. “I figured if I couldn’t save mine, I’d do everything I could to reach somebody else’s.”
