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If there’s one thing everyone should know about my mother, it’s that she’s emotionally dependent on forcing her children to attend brunch.

I have a severe distaste for brunch because I just can’t understand what the big deal is. If people want breakfast, they should eat breakfast. If they want lunch, they should eat lunch.

What is completely unnecessary? Creating a third meal because society refuses to commit to either option feels deeply unnecessary.

The food is overrated, too.

Still, I show up.

Not because I enjoy it.

I don’t.

I show up because I love my mother.

And because resisting my mother is about as realistic as convincing the sun to stop shining.

Which explains why I’m currently walking through the rose garden behind my childhood home, mentally calculating the earliest socially acceptable moment, according to Mother, for me to disappear.

One hour.

Ten minutes.

Mom’s garden stretches across several acres behind the Volpe mansion with blush-pink roses climbing the elegant marble archways. White-and-gold fountains shimmer beneath the December sun. Large Roman statues stand between flower beds like silent judges silently criticizing this family’s atrocious life choices.

Most people would probably find it strange that every single statue is of my mother.

My father would disagree.

He calls it old-school romance.

Personally, I think creating thirty-seven marble versions of your wife should qualify as a diagnosable mental condition.

No one else in this family appears concerned.

Least of all my mother.

“My moonbeam!”

I tear my eyes away from the sculpture Dad made of Mom the night she gave birth to me. It’s the one that looks like a goddess bringing the moon into the world.

Then I see her.

Mom.

The heart of this family sits on a delicate white blanket surrounded by enough food to feed a small army. Her long golden hair spills over her shoulders like strands of captured sunlight. Soft sun-kissed skin kissed by both the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, a perfect blend of her Italian and Puerto Rican roots. Mom’s wearing a soft-pink summer dress, matching sandals covered in tiny diamond crystals, and barely-there makeup because she has never needed much of it anyway.

Mom is the human version of sunshine after a merciless storm. Her beauty is the kind of beauty that reminds you the world is still capable of beautiful things.

She smiles the second she sees me and waves both arms over her head as though I could possibly miss her.

I could never.

“Come, come. Siéntate, mi niña.” She pats the empty space beside her. As I walk closer, my attention lands on the pink cooler waiting beside the picnic basket.

My eyes narrow immediately.

Mimosas.