Chapter 5 - MY MOTHER HAD BEEN TEXTING ME TOO
I searched my messages.
Four months of them.
I had read every one.
Never questioned the pattern.
Mom:
Hannah seems overwhelmed again.
Mom:
She slept late today.
Mom:
She forgot Sophie’s sweater.
Mom:
I had to take over dinner because she was behind.
Mom:
Don’t worry. I’m keeping things running while you travel.
One message now made my stomach turn.
You work so hard, Matthew. Sometimes I think she has no idea how lucky she is.
I had responded with a thumbs-up.
A thumbs-up.
Hannah was upstairs with both hands burned while I sat at the kitchen table staring at the tiny blue symbol I had sent three weeks earlier.
Not agreement exactly.
But enough.
My mother had been sending me a curated version of my wife.
And I had absorbed it because it asked nothing difficult of me.
If Hannah was overwhelmed, I did not need to confront Mom.
If Hannah was sensitive, I did not need to draw boundaries.
If Mom was merely “helping,” I could keep traveling and come home to a functioning house.
May you like
Convenience can make denial look reasonable.
---
