Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Knowing Hannah, she’s having your mother write it all down now so there will be no fighting after she passes.”
“But see, I hate this,” he confessed as we stopped at a light. “It’s fuckin’ morbid. I don’t wanna think about losing either of my parents.”
“I know,” I soothed him, reaching over to take hold of his hand and squeeze gently.
“But did you hear Jen, Rachel, and Michael? They were all upset, and Michael’s new girlfriend is a pill.”
She wasn’t my favorite. She seemed very concerned with how much money Michael would get from the sale of the house, and about his mother’s very large, very beautiful wedding ring. Thomas had the setting changed and had added diamonds for their last wedding anniversary, and it was now, not quite the ice rink that my sister-in-law wore on her finger, but close. And while I now sported a wedding ring with diamonds myself, I had never seen the appeal beyond Sam wanting people to see I was married. It was very sweet.
“You’re looking at your ring again,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
“That’s because it’s beautiful but unnecessary.”
“It was very necessary,” he assured me. “Everyone needs to know you’re taken.”
Ridiculous man. As though I didn’t look married with or without a ring.
“Rachel is all worried that she won’t get the tea set she wants, and Jen wants Dad’s fishing boat, and of course nobody says this in front of them, but we both got blasted in the kitchen when we went in there to get dessert.”
Technically, he got blasted. No one ever said things directly to me. They suggested, talked around the issues, and were passive aggressive as hell. The biggest issue, to my mind, was our kids.
“Plus, my folks love our kids best, and there’s a point of contention there because, biologically, they’re not related,” Sam grumbled, voicing my exact thoughts.
“Sam,” I said automatically, “your parents love all their grandchildren––”
“It comes down to what my folks were doing when Kola and B were growing up,” he reminded me. “Dad was retired, and Mom was working part-time because she wanted to, not because she had to.”
When Jen and Rachel had their kids, both Sam’s parents were working full-time. When Kola and Hannah were little, they spent a lot of time with their grandparents. Even with me working from home, I still needed backup, and Regina and Thomas were it. Regina took them to yoga class and to have coffee with her friends. Thomas took them for walks in the park, made them lunch and read to them. To this day, Kola’s favorite eggs—just plain eggs, mind you—were the ones his grandfather made. I didn’t get it. They were flat, like a pancake, made with sea salt and olive oil, and they were cut square. To me, nothing special. To Kola, oh dear God, the holy grail was less precious than his grandfather’s eggs.
As Kola and Hannah got older, Hannah loved attending estate sales and then going to the beauty salon with her grandmother. Kola loved going to museums with her and seeing movies. He also kept all her physicians on their toes. Hannah loved having long lunches with her grandfather, where they strolled afterwards, and he told her story after story about his youth. Kola and his grandfather fished and made home improvements and now, with my son in California, they video chatted about renovations all the time. Kola checked with him about all kinds of things, and if his grandfather said it, he was certain it was the gospel truth.
“The thing is, between you being my mother’s favorite––”
“That’s not––”
“You’re the one she cooks with, Jory,” he reminded me. “Only you. You’re the one she consults and asks questions. You and her sisters, my aunts. Not my sisters.”
He wasn’t wrong. Regina always looked to me first when she was making anything. We were the two in the kitchen, no one else.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Fine. But your folks love everyone.”
“Which is great, but when it comes down to who gets what, I think being the executor, which they just made me, is gonna suck donkey balls, because no one is gonna believe me when I say, no, really, my mother wanted Hannah to have all her diamonds.”
I laughed at how annoyed he sounded and got a glare for good measure. It wasn’t one of his better ones, and he was still holding my hand, so it really didn’t pack the punch he was hoping for. I couldn’t stop smiling at him either.
Mother’s Day itself used to be sort of a mixed bag for me. I used to worry, every now and then, if having a traditional family could have given my kids something more.
Of course, as I got older, and the kids got older, I realized that the only thing that kids need is to be loved. So whatever assortment of parents, grandparents, single parents or other family members that stepped in, it didn’t matter. And I haven’t worried in years, because now that my kids are grown and I can see them interacting out there in the world, I know who I raised, and I couldn’t be prouder. And while we all had good and bad days, their good ones definitely outweighed the days when they were selfish or petulant or just jerks.