When Mom announced she was pregnant, her father threw her out of the house. Dad had already proposed and she accepted that night.

This was just one of numerous things I didn't know about my parents before this last year.

I shift the present under my arm yet again. It's the first time in too long that I've bought her a present for Mother's Day. This will also be the first one in too long where we will actually celebrate as a family. There will be no arguing, no screaming, no nothing, other than watching Mom open her gifts, and celebrating the woman who gave me life.

"Timmy?" Mom calls as she opens the door. "Why are you just standing there? Come in. Lunch is almost ready," she steps aside and beckons me with her hand.

"Not yet, Mom," I tell her. "Can we take a walk? Just you and me?" I ask.

"Sure. Just let me tell your dad so he doesn't worry," she steps back into the house and I can hear her yell at Dad that we're going for a walk and to not hold lunch.

"Is that for me?" she asks after we've walked several blocks from the house pointing at the present under my arm.

"Oh, uh, yeah," I stammer as I shift it to my other arm.

"Are you going to give it to me?" she asks with a chuckle.

"Not yet," I inform her as I stop walking and stare at the ground, trying to gather my thoughts. "This past year has been wonderful. And not just because of the new job," I state as I start walking again. Mom falls into step with me, her hand in mine.

"I love you, Mom. More than I can ever say," I pause to clear my throat of the tears clogging it. "The things you gave up for me... I can never repay you for them."

"You don't..." she starts.

"Please, let me finish. This is hard enough," I interrupt.

"Okay," she allows with a nod.

"I've read all your journals several times. And they make me cry every time. So many misunderstandings on all our parts. If we could have just talked to each other back then..." The tears will not be denied any longer.

We both sniffle at the same time and then laugh together. Two years ago this shared moment would have been impossible. Not because I was hooked on speed, but because the chasm between us did not have a bridge. Mom built that bridge when she followed me into the darkness and pulled me out. She, or Dad, sat beside me every minute of every day for over two months watching as I fought the cravings.

"I thought I was never good enough for you. I really thought you hated me. But that night when you and Dad caught me with the razor... I have no words. I..." I give a little humorless chuckle as I try to describe how low I had fallen at that point. "I honestly never thought that you loved me enough to follow me into the darkness," I stop walking and turn to face her.

"I know you love me. I no longer question it, but I need to know something that you don't mention in the journals," I gaze into her eyes. I know that she'll want to lie about this and I'm hoping that by forcing her to look me in the eyes she'll tell the truth. "I really need you to be honest with me here, Mom. Okay? Even if you think it's not what I want to hear or what you should say. I need the truth."

"Okay, Tim. I'll tell the truth," she promises.

I glance down at our interlaced fingers, take a deep breath and look back up into her face before asking, "Did you ever wish that I'd never been born? Or that you'd given me up for adoption?"

I see the truth on her face in the split second before she can control it. And before she can think of a lie I remind her of her promise.

"You said you'd tell me the truth, Mom."

"You're right. I did say that," It's her turn to glance at our hands.

When she meets my gaze again, there is a fire in her eyes that I haven't seen since I got clean two years ago. "There were times when I used to wonder why I kept you. When you were very little. Before you could walk, when I wanted to go out with friends. Be a normal teenager. But never, not even for a split second, did I ever wish that you'd never been born. I did wish and sometimes still do, especially after a hard day, that I could turn back time and do things differently. But I can see now that you wouldn't be the man you are today if things had been different. If you had felt my love from the beginning. Seen how much you mean to me. I was just too young, Tim. I know that's not an excuse and I'm not trying to make it one. It's the truth."

By the end of her little speech she has walked several paces away, her back to me.

"Would you have mourned me like you did the others, if you had miscarried?" I ask, a little sharper than necessary.

She spins to face me, her eyes narrowed in a flash of anger. "How can you ask me that?" she stalks up to me standing toe to toe as she yells at me for being so very obtuse. "While I have mourned every baby I ever lost, I would have mourned you the most. You are my first born. The one that showed me how wonderful being a mom can be," her voice has lost some of the anger but not all of it.

I've screwed up again. And after I came here to give her the kind of Mother's Day she never had.

"I'm sorry. I was just being stupid. But I really needed to know," I hang my head and scuff my toe on the concrete. "I saw how hard each miscarriage was on you and Dad and I..." I swallow past the lump in my throat. "I just wanted, no, needed to hear you say that you would've mourned me if I'd've died before you met me."

"I've loved you since before I knew you were on the way. And yes you were being stupid. I should smack you upside your head for that one, Timothy Speedle," she says with a smile.

I snort a little with ironic laughter. "It never worked when Dad did it," I remind her, and the humor fades a bit from her face.

"No, it didn't, Tim. But we simply didn't know what to do with a child who was so much brighter than we are," she says as she takes my hand again in hers. "You scared us, still do actually. And you frustrated us. Because we didn't have any experience as parents, we made mistakes. Oh so very many of them," She takes a step closer to me and hugs me with her free arm, the embrace awkward between the package I'm carrying and the way our other hands are linked.

"And unfortunately, we'll probably keep right on making mistakes," She smiles up at me, her chin resting on my chest. "Life is a work in progress, Timothy. I don't think we ever stop learning, not if we're really alive. I've learned at least that much in the last couple of years, with everything we've been through together."

I return her smile. "So... mistakes are a good thing, huh?"

"If they teach us something, I'm beginning to think it's alright to make a few," she smiles back, warm as the spring sun on our shoulders. "And I think the ones we've all made have taught us a lot, don't you? Maybe the most important thing of all is how not to make the same ones twice."

I nod and give her a quick squeeze before I let her go. "And maybe how to listen," I add.

"Especially how to listen," she confirms with a strong nod, and lets go of my hand to hook her arm through mine.

"Good. So now you'll listen to me?" I ask.

"Of course, baby. That is why we're out here isn't it?" she cocks her head to the side as she gazes up at me.

"Yeah," I pull my arm free so I can pace away from her while I gather my thoughts.

There is so much I need to tell her and only so much she'll be able to handle at once.

I decide to start with my reasons for getting clean.

"Um... I... uh...I met someone. She was an addict too. In fact her brother was my dealer," I glance back at her over my shoulder to try and gauge her reaction. When all she does is stare at me I continue. "Her name is Amanda. I thought she might be the one for me. But she's not. A coupla days before Joe found me strung out in the ER of Dade Memorial, she told me she was pregnant. She wanted to celebrate by trying something new her brother's cooks had made," I stop my pacing to once again look at her.

"Is there something I'm supposed to say here, Tim?" she asks as she walks up to me and takes my face in her hands. "You are my son. My first born child. Despite what I've led you to believe over the course of your childhood, there is not a goddamn thing in this world that you could do to make me stop loving you. So whatever it is you need to say, just say it," There are tears in her eyes.

I swore that I would never make her cry in anything other than joy ever again.

"Mama, please don't cry," I whisper as my own vision gets cloudy. "I never meant to make you cry."

"Oh, baby. These are for your pain," she informs me. "Please go on."

"Well, I didn't know these new cooks and didn't trust their stuff, so I refused to try it. Amanda said that if Marcus trusted them, then that was good enough for her," I can't look her in the eye as I tell her the rest. "She took her usual amount, but nothing happened, so she took more. What she didn't know was that it was slow acting. She ended up overdosing and almost dying. She lost the baby," I end on a sob, remembering that awful day and knowing firsthand how helpless my dad had felt over the years as he watched my mom struggle to give him another child. Watching as she suffered the worst loss any woman can suffer. The loss of an unborn child. Having to hold her as she blamed herself. Not being able to comfort her. Not understanding her pain.

"My God," Mom whispers. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. But glad too. Glad because it brought you back to me."

"I never knew... never even suspected... how hard it was for you and Dad. To go through that over and over," I drop to my knees and wrap my arms around her waist. "I'm so sorry for every horrible thought I ever had for each child you lost."

"Tim, please get up," she pleads as she tries to make me stand up again.

"You don't understand, Mom. I felt responsible for most of them," I say as I bury my face in her stomach.

"Baby, please don't. They were no more your fault than they were mine," she's sobbing really hard now as she grabs my shoulders and forces me to stand up again. "Look at me. Tim, please. I know your father and I allowed you to think that you caused my miscarriages, but you didn't. Not a single one."

"I know that now, Mom. But back then..." I turn and walk a few paces away, kicking at the grass as I try to find the words to tell her what is in my heart. "I really don't know how to tell you what it felt like. Standing by that hospital bed, watching as Amanda lost my child. But of course you know what it feels like to lose a child," I turn back to face her. "As I stood there, holding her hand, knowing that I could never help her get through this…I…" I take a breath and look up at the sky, fighting back tears. "I decided that I was never going to go back. Marcus had stolen more than I was willing to give. He stole my child before it even had a chance. I'm pretty sure that he talked Amanda into trying the new drug. Knowing what would happen."

"But why would he risk his sister's life?" Mom asks the one question that has been haunting my every waking moment since that horrible day.

"The only reason I can think of is that he didn't want her to have my child."

"Tim..." Mom begins when I don't continue right away.

"No, Mom. There's more. I...I really don't know how to thank you and Dad for everything," I take her hand with my free one. "This was all I could think of to give you to show you that your love isn't misplaced. That I love you, too," I hand her the gift that I agonized for days over. "I am so sorry that I never truly gave you a gift while I was growing up. Maybe this will make up for all those Mother's Days when you had nothing from me."

I watch out of the corner of my eye as she opens the box.

"Oh, Timothy. It's wonderful," she exclaims as she throws her arms around my neck. "Did you make it yourself?" she asks as she fingers the edges of the shadowbox.

"No," I say with a chuckle. "I'm not that talented. But I did have it made just for you."

"'To the best mom I could ever have'," she reads the engraving. "Tim, I wasn't always..."

"There's more," I interrupt to show her what the box holds.

"Ooo," she squeals as she picks up each item.

First is a dried rose bud. I know that roses are her favorite flower. Next is a figurine of a mother and child. I had our names printed on the bottom along with the date. Then she picks up one of my baby shoes. "I was wondering what happened to this," she grins up at me. "What is this?" she picks up a small blue medallion.

"That's my two year chip."

"Tim. I can't take your chip. You earned it yourself," she tells me as she tries to return it.

"Please, Mom. I want you to have it," I inform her as I press it back into her hand. "It belongs to you as much as it does to me. Without you and Dad I don't know if I'd be standing here today. I know Joe was trying to get me clean, but I would have fought him. And he would have made me go in to rehab. You allowed me to detox outside of a center, keeping it off my record."

"Why was that so important to you? I never did understand that," she prompts me to finish my tale as she links her arm through mine again and turns us towards the house.

"I knew that Joe had done his best to keep my name out of whatever reports he had to write whenever he raided Marcus' house. I asked him about it during one of the few lucid moments I had before you showed up in Miami to get me. He said that he felt partly responsible for my turning to drugs. Hinted that Adam's accident wasn't all my fault and that if I ever wanted to turn my love of science towards police work he'd do his best to see I got every opportunity to do so."

"So you couldn't have drug abuse on your record. Not even a tiny hint. Which would include checking into a rehab center," she finishes for me.

"Yeah. I'm lucky that Joe was able to find me a NA group a few towns over so I don't risk running into someone who could blow it for me."

"Well, I'm glad you're happy now," she smiles up at me.

Uh-oh. I know that smile. I try to head her off at the pass, "Mom, please..."

"Now, to find you a wife..."