I walked slowly up the steps of my porch, wincing as my knees complained. Seventy‑six is no joke. The mailbox creaked when I pulled it open.
Flyers, bills, and a cream‑colored envelope addressed in my daughter‑in‑law’s ornate handwriting. I stared at it a long moment before breaking the seal. Dear Rosalyn, you are invited to a celebratory dinner in honor of Rebecca’s 15th birthday, Saturday at 7:00 p.m.
No warm greeting. No how are you. Just the facts.
And yet it was an invitation, the first in a long time. My son Neville and his wife, Lizzie, lived twenty minutes away in a glassy modern house with a manicured yard. I used to be there every week helping with the kids, making Sunday lunch.
I had not set foot inside for over a year. It happened by degrees. First the phone calls shifted.
“Mom, we can’t make it today. We’ve got a lot on.”
Then the holidays. “You know, we’ve decided to spend Christmas with just our family this year.”
As if I wasn’t their family.
I set the envelope on my lap and looked at the photos lined along my dresser. Neville as a gap‑toothed boy covered in freckles. Neville at fourteen with skinned knees and a smile too big for his face.
My only child. Roy, my husband, died when Neville was nine. I shelved my dream of nursing school, took whatever hours the supermarket could give me, took in ironing at night, and made the numbers add up one careful week after another.
I taught myself to bargain with fear and make it blink first. Neville grew, studied, graduated, became an engineer. He married Lizzie from a family of teachers, bought a spacious house, had two beautiful children.
Rebecca first, then Christopher. I changed diapers, warmed bottles, sang songs I had learned from my mother and ones I made up when the words would not come. Back then Lizzie was grateful to have me nearby.
Everything changed after Christopher turned five. Neville got a promotion. Lizzie switched careers and began selling real estate.
There were new friends, new restaurants, new vacations. There was a new version of my son’s life where I did not fit. “Mom, could you please not wear that old sweater?”
“Rosalyn, we don’t eat fried foods anymore.”
Lizzie had always been particular.
She carried herself like someone who had rehearsed every room she might someday enter. She cringed when I mispronounced a word, when I used the wrong fork, when I brought a pie instead of flowers. When the children needed me, I was convenient.
Once they didn’t, I became a complication. Thanksgiving last year was the cut. I showed up with a turkey I had brined overnight.
The door opened to a woman in a branded apron. “Who are you?” I asked. “Laura from Gourmet Taste Catering.
And you are?”
“His mother,” I said. Lizzie appeared behind her, polished as a magazine cover. “Rosalyn, you’re early.
We were going to call. We’re hosting Neville’s colleagues, so we hired a caterer this year.”
I stood in the hall with my turkey and felt like I had shown up to the wrong house with the right love. Invitations stopped after that.
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