2077One day, I went to a little diner in Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA. I was served some excellent Eggs Benedict by a charismatic waitress, called Lori. She had many tattoos, including an eye-catching one of a phoenix rising from flames on her arm. I asked her about it and she said it was one of 32 that she had.

As I left I told her about SOTM and asked if she’d take part. She told me to return when she finished work the next day, and that’s when this photo was taken, in the diner’s car park.

”When I was six years old, there were six children in my family at the time,” she says in her audio clip “We were going to bed and I told my father ‘I love you, Daddy’. And he says this to me. And I looked at him perplexed, because I knew at six that there were more numbers than 10.

”He was a big, burly man. His hands should have belonged to giants. But they were the gentlest hands you’ve ever seen, or could have felt. He said to me ‘You see my hands? You see what I’m doing?’ And he cupped his fingers together. ‘If I put you inside of that, that’s my hug. That’s the most in the world and I love you 10 muches.”

Lori went on to explain how this phrase had been used among her family members at various times of great difficulty, including with her niece who has spina bifida and was in hospital, Lori’s own battle with cancers - “three I’ve beaten and six I’ve got can’t be treated” - and the death of her parents and a child of hers.

She told me that this phrase is only used within her family, and is rarely told to people outside of it. Then she looked directly at me and said: “The only people outside my family to get to hear this are those who really deserve it.” I’ll never forget that moment.