When I was in grade school, my prized possession was a button. It went on my quilted coat in the winter, and my jean jacket in the spring, and when it got too hot, I’d reluctantly pin it to my book bag. This was the ’80s, and buttons featuring Smurfette or Jem were sartorial staples. Still, my button stood out. “Vote socialist workers,” it said, and below that: “González for vice-president.” It had a photograph of a woman’s face in profile: black hair, big glasses, ribbed turtleneck, determined look. My mother.

The button was a souvenir from her 1984 campaign for vice president of the United States—my mother, Andrea González, was the first Puerto Rican woman to run for national office. The day it came in the mail, I was 7 years old and hadn’t lived with her for nearly four years. Her running mate was a former Black Panther named Mel Mason. Obviously, they lost. But that didn’t make me less devoted to the thing. If asked—and I always hoped people would ask—I could rattle off the talking points of their platform.

Lots of kids don’t have mothers. The teachers at my Brooklyn public schools made sure we motherless children knew that we weren’t alone, that there were others whose permission slips and parent-teacher conferences were tended to by an aunt or a sister or a grandparent. We were the ones the other families whispered about: whose mother had died, whose mother had left with a no-good man, whose mother was lost to the streets or prison or drinking or drugs.

I remember feeling terribly sorry for the kids whose mothers had abandoned them, and terribly afraid I’d be mistaken for one. Because my mother hadn’t ditched me; she was working to save the world from the ravages of capitalism. There was a reason she wasn’t with me. A good reason. The button was my proof. And for years, it was enough.