“I did.”
She burst out laughing.
Soon we were both laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes.
Then her expression softened.
“How do you feel, Dot?”
I considered the question.
“Like myself again.”
That was the truth.
For six years, I’d slowly become a smaller version of myself.
Someone who arrived early, brought food, paid expenses, and left whenever she was no longer needed.
Cecilia nodded.
“Sometimes we help create patterns that eventually hurt us.”
“I know.”
“But if you helped build the pattern,” she said, “you can stop building it.”
I thought about those words for days.
Then, in November, Owen called.
“Mom, could I come by tomorrow? Just me?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
He arrived Saturday afternoon.
For the first time since he was a teenager, he knocked instead of simply walking in.
We sat at the same oak kitchen table where he’d done homework as a child.
