“I was trying to teach them something.”
“You taught them exactly what I don’t want them to learn.”
“What?”
I looked at the closed bedroom doors down the hall.
“That love is something you have to earn from people who are supposed to give it freely.”
My mother’s voice cracked.
“Please don’t do this.”
I swallowed hard.
“Mom, you told us never to come back.”
“I was angry.”
“So was I.”
“I’m your mother.”
“And I’m theirs.”
That sentence ended the conversation.
She didn’t argue.
She simply whispered:
“I never thought you’d actually choose them over us.”
My heart broke.
Because that was the final misunderstanding.
I wasn’t choosing my children over my family.
I was choosing my children over the version of family my mother had created.
“I wish you had never made me choose,” I said.
Then I hung up.
