This is a picture of my beautiful mother, Peggie Jeffers. She raised me as a single parent when divorce and dysfunctional families were not the norm. She carried me up and down stairs when I had rheumatic fever. She made me Halloween costumes. She taught me to love reading and dance and literature and art. She tolerated indignities so that I might succeed. She was a woman both ahead and behind her time. I lost her in 2002, but she remains with me forever. With every breath I exhale, her essence is released into the world.