I learned that as a young woman she had sung in a community choir.

I learned that after my father died, a kind man named Thomas, who ran a fruit stand back home, had set aside the sweetest peaches for her every single week, for years.

“Did you like him?” I teased her one afternoon, and she laughed, embarrassed and bright, and told me to mind my own business, which of course meant that she had.

For thirty years I had known her only as Mom — a role, a function, the person who cooked and fixed and endured.