The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Kevin Sessums writes movingly of his mentorship of a young Puerto Rican kid from New York:

Brandon’s own story is his to tell. I can say it is quite a complicated one. At 14, he is now the same age his mother was when she gave birth to him. My mentioning that to him the other dayhe really hadn’t thought about itprompted our first grown-up conversation about forgiveness and understanding. The little boy with the tough-guy act I’d met so many Christmases ago is maturing into a young man who knows that toughness can be a shell that protects the tenderness inside.