Joyce’s Reviews > The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell > Status Update

But to my mother—I suspect to all mothers—their little boys will always be their little boys, no matter how old those boys become.

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My mother had ironed the fabric until the pleats could cut paper.

expect that of our grandparents. Not our parents. For some reason, we think our parents will never grow old, perhaps because when they do, we are forced to acknowledge that we will one day grow old, and we face our own mortality.

“None of us is getting out of here alive.”

“You know, son, it’s not the school that makes the student.”

I’d be worried my children would be like me, you know. Have my eyes.

“They should be so lucky,” she said.

“Lucky?”

“Yes. They made you the person you are, and I happen to believe you’re a very good person, Sam Hill.”

I’d applied to the University of California schools, which had negligible tuition for California residents and were a better fit for my family’s budget.

This time we didn’t need to leave six inches for the Holy Spirit, as we did in grammar school.

If there was one thing I had learned about my mother, it was that she did not make idle threats.

“No way, young man. You do not call a young lady on the phone to ask her to the prom. You drive to her house and ask her proper.”

“you could look at it like you’d be opening the door for other kids of color.”

“Those kids will open that door on their own, in the classroom,” Mr. Cantwell said. “Just as you have done.”

Discrimination is difficult, because in its worst form, it is not overt. It is subtle.

My mother had spent her life advocating for me, ensuring that I received the same opportunities as any other child, and her maternal instinct, finely honed from those years, would always be to protect me. But at this moment I knew she was worried as to whether she could protect me from myself.