For The Mothers

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

In third grade, I was sent home from school with a case of lice, which had effectively infiltrated my tiny head and the heads of many of my classmates. My mother picked me up from school, sat me down in a hard wooden chair, and went about the arduous process of picking each tiny bug out of my short brown mane. She did this more than once, patiently setting about her hours-long task…