I sighed.
"I'm tired."
She nodded.
"That I believe."
I looked toward my laptop.
"Do you think I should still give the presentation?"
My mother sat on the edge of the sofa.
"Do you want to?"
I hesitated.
"I worked really hard on it."
"I know."
"But now all I can think about is what happened."
She considered that.
"Then maybe the question isn't whether you're ready to pretend nothing happened. Maybe it's whether you still want to share your work."
I looked at her.
"What would you do?"
She smiled sadly.
"Amara, if I answered every question about your future by telling you what I'd do, you'd never get a chance to decide who you are."
I sighed.
"That's annoyingly reasonable."
She laughed.
"I work hard at it."
I looked down.
Then I asked something that had been bothering me all afternoon.
"Mom, have you ever been treated like that?"
Her expression changed.
She didn't answer immediately.
Finally, she nodded.
"Not exactly like that. But yes, I've been treated as though I didn't belong somewhere."
I looked up.
"Even after you became a senator?"
She smiled without humor.
"Titles don't erase people's assumptions."
I waited.
She continued.
"When I was a young attorney, I walked into a conference room for a meeting I'd been invited to attend. A man handed me his coat and asked whether I could take it to the closet."
I stared.
"What did you do?"
"I told him where the closet was."
I almost laughed.
She smiled.
"Then I introduced myself as the attorney he was supposed to meet."
"What did he say?"
"He became very polite."
I shook my head.
My mother looked toward the window.
"I've had people assume I was an assistant, a staff member, or somebody's guest. Sometimes I corrected them. Sometimes I didn't have the energy to turn another ordinary meeting into a lesson."
She looked back at me.
"But I never wanted you to believe that being qualified meant everyone would automatically recognize your qualifications."
I nodded slowly.
Then I asked, "Why didn't you tell me more of those stories?"
She was quiet.
"Because I wanted you to have room to become yourself without inheriting all my fears."