I used to tell myself I had no choice. That was the sentence I repeated every time guilt tried to crawl into my chest. I had three children, two boys who were starting to share a room like trapped animals and a daughter who cried because she had no quiet place to study.
My husband worked overtime, I picked up weekend shifts, and still every month felt like drowning with our mouths barely above water. So when my father died and left the house in my name, I looked at the papers, then looked at my mother sitting by the kitchen window with her tea, and I convinced myself the decision had already been made for me. She was seventy-two. Her knees hurt.
Some mornings she forgot where she had put her glasses even when they were hanging from her neck. I told myself she needed care we couldn’t provide. I told myself the children needed space more than she needed familiar walls. I told myself many things, because the truth sounded too ugly: I wanted the house, and she was in the way. The day I told her, she did not cry. She did not accuse me.
She only looked around the living room where she had spent forty-six years of marriage, where my father had built the shelves with his own hands, where every corner still smelled like him, and she smiled so softly it almost broke me. “I understand,” she said. “Children need room to grow.” I hated how gentle she was. It made me feel worse.
I asked what she wanted to take with her, expecting boxes, photo albums, blankets, dishes, maybe my father’s old watch. She pointed to a small clay pot beside the window.
It held a tired green plant with thick leaves and dry soil. “Only that,” she said. “I will only take my plant with me.” I almost laughed because it seemed ridiculous. A whole life, and she wanted a plant. I asked where she wanted to go. Her fingers tightened around the pot. “Take me to the least expensive nursing home,” she said. “I know you don’t earn much, and I don’t want you to spend all your money on your sick mother.” I should have heard the pain hidden under her kindness.