Even though I loved my life in Raleigh, I enjoyed spending time with my family in the small town known for its Shad Festival. My mother never intended to raise her family there. After she and my father met in college, they planned to live up North after graduation. Their dreams came true when they landed jobs in Baltimore, hers in teaching and his in accounting. Their wedded bliss lasted a short five years. Two months before my father’s 29th birthday, a drunk driver struck him as he crossed the street. Left with three-year-old twin girls, Momma moved back home to rework her life’s plan. She got a job teaching and enrolled in graduate school. By the time Yolanda and I entered high school, my mother was Lena Myers Thurman, Ed.D. Four years later, she occupied her current position of associat
