The empty seat at our table was my mother's. She died when I was twelve, and no one ever moved her chair.
My father didn't have the heart, so it stayed, pushed in at the corner, the cushion worn from years of her sitting.
At night, when I sewed by the window, we ran an extension cord from the neighbor's outlet. Their generator was stronger than ours.
The school janitor, Mr. Bell, would let me stay late in the home ec room. He'd unlock the sewing machines and say, 'Take your time.'
He was the first person who told me college was possible. Not with words, but by leaving the door unlocked.
I left that town at eighteen, the first in my family to graduate. But the empty seat followed me everywhere.
Now I'm forty, a seamstress in a mountain town at the end of the plow route. I have my own table.
I keep one chair empty. Not for her anymore. For the girl who needed an extension cord and a janitor to believe she could stitch a life together.
Some silences you learn to read. That seat taught me everything.