I didn't sleep very well that first night.
The sofa bed wasn't particularly uncomfortable.
It was the feeling of knowing why I was sleeping there that kept me awake.
I could hear the ocean outside.
Every so often, somebody walked across the upstairs floor.
I recognized David's footsteps.
Then Ashley's.
They were comfortable.
They had the bedroom I had paid for.
I had the sofa.
I lay there looking at the ceiling.
And I started thinking about the last three years.
Especially the last eighteen months.
Harold had been gone for three years.
When he was alive, he handled many of the financial decisions in our household.
I handled other things.
We had been together long enough that neither of us needed to explain every decision.
We trusted each other.
After he died, I had to learn how to manage everything alone.
At first, David tried to help.
He offered to look at bills.
He helped me with a few household matters.
I appreciated it.
He was my only son.
I had raised him to be responsible, and I wanted to believe that the man he had become would always look out for his mother.
Then the requests started.
The first ones didn't seem unusual.
There was a problem with their house.
They needed help with a payment.
Something unexpected had come up.
David called me one afternoon.
"Mom, could I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"We're having a little trouble with the expenses this month."
I asked what was wrong.
He explained.
I listened.
Then I offered to help.
I didn't think much about it.
Parents help their children.
That's what I had always believed.
Later, there was another problem.
Then another.
Sometimes Ashley called.
Sometimes David did.
The explanations changed, but the ending was usually the same.
They needed money.
And I had it.
I wasn't struggling financially.
Harold and I had worked for many years.
We had saved carefully.
We had built a comfortable life together.
I wasn't wealthy beyond imagination.
But I was secure.
And I wanted David to be secure too.
So I helped.
Their down payment was one of the larger expenses.
There were also household costs.
Repairs.
Unexpected bills.
Emergencies.
Every time I helped, I told myself it was temporary.
They were going through a difficult period.
Things would settle down eventually.
I didn't want my son worrying about money when I could make the situation easier.
I certainly didn't want Ashley thinking I was keeping score.
I never asked them to repay every dollar.
I never made a list and presented it at dinner.
I considered it family support.
But something began bothering me.
Their financial problems never seemed to end.
They would ask for help with one expense.
A few weeks later, another expense appeared.
Sometimes the explanation sounded familiar.
Sometimes I couldn't understand why the same difficulties kept returning.
I began asking questions.
Not angry questions.
Just ordinary ones.
What happened to the money from the previous month?
Was the repair finished?
Had the bill been paid?
The answers were always reassuring.
"Everything is under control, Mom."
"Don't worry about it."
"We'll be fine."
I wanted to believe them.
But I was beginning to notice that reassurance was not the same thing as an explanation.
During the previous eighteen months, I had given David and Ashley more than seventy thousand dollars.
More than seventy thousand.
I had never imagined I would need to think about that amount in relation to my own child.
But there it was.
And I couldn't ignore it anymore.
Six months before my birthday, something changed.
I began paying closer attention.
I didn't announce it.
I didn't accuse anybody.
I simply stopped relying on my memory.
I started documenting things.
I kept track of what I had given them.
I paid attention to the explanations attached to each request.
I wanted to understand where things stood.
That was all.
At first, I felt uncomfortable doing it.
I was their mother.
Keeping records seemed cold.
Almost suspicious.
But then I remembered how many times I had looked at a bank statement and wondered why I couldn't make sense of the numbers.
I remembered how often I had been told not to worry.
And I decided I had a right to understand my own finances.
Especially after Harold was gone.
I didn't want to make a mistake simply because I was afraid of hurting someone's feelings.
That was the beginning of it.
Six months of paying attention.
Six months of keeping track.
I wasn't looking for a reason to punish my son.
I was trying to understand what was happening.
And by the time I arrived in Cape Cod, I had already started putting things in order.
I hadn't told David.
I hadn't told Ashley.
There was no reason to discuss something I was still trying to understand.
Now, lying on that sofa, I wondered whether they had mistaken my generosity for something permanent.
Perhaps they believed I would continue helping no matter what.
Perhaps they believed my money was simply available whenever they needed it.
And perhaps that explained why Ashley could look at the room I had paid for and decide that I didn't deserve to sleep in it.
I closed my eyes.
But I couldn't stop thinking about one thing.
David had laughed.
Not because Ashley had said something funny.
Because he agreed with her.
That hurt more than anything she had said.
My son knew what losing Harold had done to me.
He had seen the empty chair at my kitchen table.
He had watched me learn to spend holidays without my husband.
He knew I still reached for the telephone sometimes before remembering there was nobody to call.
And yet he had described me as adaptable.
As though loneliness had made me less deserving of consideration.
I turned onto my side.
I thought about the birthday dinner planned for the following evening.
I had arranged everything.
The food.
The flowers.
The reservations.
I wanted Richard and Linda to enjoy themselves.
I wanted David to have a nice weekend.
I even wanted Ashley to be happy.
That was the part I found hardest to admit.
I had spent so much time trying to make everybody comfortable that I had stopped asking whether I was comfortable myself.
The next morning, I got up early.
The house was quiet.
I folded the blanket from the sofa and placed it neatly over the back.
Then I went into the kitchen.
The refrigerator was still full.
I made coffee.
I stood near the counter, looking through the glass doors at the ocean.
The morning light was beautiful.
I thought about Harold.
He would have been furious if he had known what happened.
Not because of the bedroom.
Because of the way our son had spoken about me.
Harold believed that respect mattered most when nobody was watching.
I had always agreed.
But I had spent three years making excuses for people who were not showing me much of it.
I heard footsteps behind me.
It was Linda.
She was wearing a robe and carrying her coffee cup.
"You're awake early."
"I didn't sleep much."
She looked toward the sitting area.
Then she looked back at me.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Finally, she said something I hadn't expected.
"Margaret, I've been thinking about last night."
I turned toward her.
"About what?"
She placed her cup on the counter.
"About where you're sleeping."
I tried to smile.
"It's all right."
Linda shook her head.
"No. It isn't."
I looked at her.
And for the first time since arriving at the house, I felt that somebody else understood what had happened.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: My Daughter-in-Law Raised Her Glass to Celebrate a Weekend She Hadn’t Paid For, Until Her Own Mother Asked One Question
I Thought My Seventieth Birthday Would Bring My Family Closer, Until I Heard What They Really Thought of Me
Part 2 of 24
