I opened my own bank statement yesterday for the first time in four years. My son does not know the credit union mailed it to me.
He has managed my money since his father died, and every Friday he hands me an envelope and tells me to make it stretch.
Forty dollars. That is what is in the envelope. Grocery money, church money, everything money. Last month, I asked if I could buy my granddaughter a store-bought birthday present instead of knitting one.
She was turning thirteen, and I wanted to choose something she would be excited to open instead of pretending to be excited because she loves me.
Scott rubbed his eyes as if I were a leaky faucet he had been meaning to fix.
“Money’s tight, Ma. Maybe make her something. Kids love that.”
“She’s thirteen,” I said. “I thought I might take her shopping.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet. That would be the point of taking her.”
He sighed. “Just make her something, okay?”
I said, “All right, honey.”
So I knitted. On Friday, when he gave me my own money like an allowance, I thanked him.
That is a sentence I am nervous to put where people who know us might read it. I thanked my grown son for allowing me forty dollars of my own money.
I know what some people will say. They will ask why I let him take charge in the first place, or why I did not look at a statement sooner.
I have asked myself both questions, but the honest answer begins with his father dying.
I was not myself for a good year after my husband passed. Some days I could make necessary decisions, and some days a simple form looked like more than I could manage. Scott stepped in before I had enough sense to decide what stepping in ought to mean.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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