“I just felt like helping out your family.”

When I was 8 or 9 years old our water heater went out. I remember it pretty vividly gushing water into our hall way, and my mother more or less panicking, trying to figure out how to shut off the water to the house.

She was a newly single mother. My father had left less than a year ago. She had three kids in the house, and little to no support from my fa…