My Daughter Thanked My Mother For Basically Raising Her—Then Grandma Refused To Take The Credit
PART 8
For one terrible second, I wanted to hang up.
Not because Leah was crying.
Because she had turned me into a feeling she was afraid to have.
I could hear the delivery driver outside the stockroom telling Kayla that somebody else had signed for the butter. I could hear the refrigerator fan. I could hear my daughter breathing into the phone.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I told her.
“I don’t either.”
“Did Ava say she was angry?”
“She said, ‘You missed my part.’”
“That sounds accurate.”
“Mom.”
“What?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. She was disappointed. You missed it. That is not nothing.”
Leah began crying harder.
I immediately regretted my tone.
“Okay. I sounded cold.”
“No. It’s just—” She stopped. “This is how it starts.”
There it was.
“What starts?”
“You miss one thing. Then another. Then work gets bigger because people keep asking. Then your kid just gets used to Grandma showing up.”
The stockroom seemed suddenly too small.
“You think that is what happened to us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just described it like a disease progression.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“And you said you felt like me.”
“I did.”
I leaned against a stack of flour bags.
The old anger arrived clean and fast.
“Leah, I am not the worst future version of you.”
Silence.
I had never said it before because I had not understood that was what hurt.
Not Grandma raised me.
Not always at work.
This.
Every time Leah worried about missing something, I was the picture at the bottom of the page labeled WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU KEEP GOING.
“Mom, I didn’t say worst.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“Can you not make this about your feelings right now?”
I almost laughed at the justice of the sentence.
“Apparently that is hereditary too.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I told Kayla I was taking an early lunch and drove to Leah’s house.
She worked from home on Wednesdays. When I arrived, she was still in her navy work blouse and sock feet. Her laptop was open on the dining table. A folded paper assembly program sat beside it.
I pointed at the program.
“Did Ava give you that?”
“She saved one for me.”
“That seems promising.”
“She was still sad.”
“I believe you.”
Leah looked exhausted.
I sat across from her.
“Tell me what happened without turning it into the next twenty years.”
She stared at me.
“Traffic happened.”
“Okay.”
“I left at the time I planned. The interstate stopped. Matt couldn’t go because he was at a site visit. I called the school, which was obviously useless because they were not going to delay second grade for me.”
“Rude of them.”
She smiled despite herself.
“I got there at one thirty-six. Her class finished at one twenty-eight.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it.”
“That’s enough.”
She picked up the program.
“I hate that I missed it.”
“You should be allowed to hate that.”
“Without quitting my job?”
I looked at her.
“You know you’re asking the wrong person if you want permission to quit work.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Neither am I.”
Her laptop chimed.
Leah glanced at the screen and went still.
“What?”
She turned it toward herself, read, then covered her mouth with one hand.
“The supervisor job.”
“What about it?”
“I got it.”
For half a second, joy broke through. Pure and surprised.
Then it collapsed.
“Oh, God.”
I watched the whole change.
“How long do you have to answer?”
“Monday.”
She closed the laptop.
“I can’t do this.”
“You literally just got the offer.”
“I missed one assembly before I even have the job.”
“Those events are not related.”
“They feel related.”
I knew better than to tell her feelings did not count.
So I said nothing.
Leah walked to the window.
“I spent my entire childhood promising myself I would not be the mom who always had a reason.”
I felt the sentence like a slap, but quieter.
“Were there that many reasons?”
She turned.
“Yes.”
“Were there also times I was there?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does your promise require turning me into only the first answer?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
She folded her arms.
“You want me to say I was unfair.”
“No. I want you to stop building your motherhood against mine.”
Her face tightened.
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“You just told me missing one assembly makes you feel like me.”
“Because it did.”
“And if you take a promotion, you become more like me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You are about to.”
We both went quiet.
The clock over her stove clicked to eleven thirty.
Leah stared at the closed laptop.
Then she said, “Tell me not to take it.”
