I started to feel like an obligation, a check mark on her to-do list. Visit mom. Right between grocery shopping and oil change.
After my heart episode 2 years ago, I started to really pay attention to how Victoria treated me. Once you see a pattern, you can’t unsee it.
Every conversation became transactional. She’d call maybe once every two weeks and ask how I was doing, but I could hear her multitasking in the background. The click of her keyboard, the distant sound of the television.
Once she muted me to yell at the kids, forgot she’d muted me, and I sat there in silence for 2 minutes before she remembered I was on the line.
Sorry, Mom. What were you saying?
I can’t remember what I’d been saying. It didn’t matter.
Anyway, there was the time I called to tell her I’d finally finished the photo albums I’d been making, one for her, organized by year, with pictures from her childhood through her wedding. I’d spent months on them, carefully labeling each photo, writing little notes about the memories.
Oh, that’s nice, Mom. Just hang on to it and I’ll grab it next time I’m over.
She didn’t come over for 4 months. When she finally did, she left the album on my kitchen counter. I found it there after she’d gone, forgotten.
The financial requests started about a year ago. Not direct requests. Victoria was too proud for that.
But hence, the furnace is acting up and the quote to replace it is insane. Or private school tuition increases are killing us. Or Emma needs braces and our dental insurance barely covers anything.
I helped. Of course I helped. 2,000 here, 5,000 there. Once 7,500 for what she called an emergency roof repair that turned out to be a complete kitchen renovation based on the photos she posted on Facebook 3 weeks later.
I was living on social security and the small pension from my bookkeeping job, plus what remained of Robert’s life insurance payout, which I’d invested carefully. I wasn’t wealthy, but I was comfortable and I kept helping because she was my daughter and those were my grandchildren.
Victoria never paid me back, never even mentioned the money again after the checks cleared.
When I gently brought up one of the loans, just once, just the roof repair that became a kitchen, she got defensive.
I didn’t ask you to give me that money, Mom. You offered. If you’re keeping score, that’s on you.
Holidays became negotiations.
We’ll do Christmas morning with Derek’s family, but we can stop by around 5.
They’d arrive at 6:30. The kids would be tired and cranky. Victoria would be on her phone. They’d stay for 40 minutes, and I’d watch them pull out of my driveway with the dinner I’d made barely touched.
I tried talking to her, not confrontationally. I’m not that kind of mother, but gently.
Victoria, honey, I feel like we don’t connect like we used to.
Mom, everyone’s busy. It’s not personal.
But it felt personal. It felt very personal.
Then came my 72nd birthday this past March. I invited Victoria and her family for dinner. Nothing fancy.
I was making pot roast, her favorite when she was growing up, with those roasted carrots she used to pick out of the pan when she thought I wasn’t looking. I bought a special dessert from the bakery. I decorated the dining room. Emma and Jacob could play in the backyard.
Just a nice family evening.
Mom, we can’t make it. Derek’s company is having a thing.
I saw the pictures on Facebook 2 days later. There was no company thing. They’d gone to Dererick’s parents’ lake house for the weekend.
Emma and Jacob were on a boat wearing matching life jackets. Victoria was smiling, her arm around Derrick’s mother, who was tagged in the post with a caption, “Best weekend with the best grandma.”
I stared at that photo for a long time. The way Victoria’s smile looked genuine. The way she’d found time for Dererick’s mother, but not for me. The best grandma comment that felt like a knife between my ribs.