She said that was generous.
I noticed that nobody had mentioned paying me for this. I noticed this in the way you notice something you’ve been trained not to say out loud.
“Mom,” I said, “I was let go. I gave them four weeks and a fourteen-page Alder section. If Luke has questions, he’s welcome to ask, but I’m also not available indefinitely for free consultation.”
A silence. Then: “Grace, I just think if you’re a little patient with this –“
“I’m very patient. I’m also job hunting.”
The calls continued to be weekly. The texture continued to be slightly strained in a way that I decided was information about where my mother’s loyalties lived when they were tested, rather than something I needed to fix.
What I was changing, gradually, was my relationship to the story I’d been telling myself about the company.
The story I’d told myself for eighteen years was: this is a family business, the rules are different, the trade-offs are different, the compensation in relationships and belonging makes up for other things.
The version I was beginning to see more clearly was: this is a business where I performed operations management and was paid operations management wages, and in exchange I received the belief that my position was secure and that my contribution was recognized, and when the belief was tested by an actual decision, it did not hold.
I am not the first person to learn this about a family business arrangement. I would not be the last. What I was doing in those weeks, in the evenings when I wasn’t applying for jobs, was updating my understanding of an eighteen-year experience from the inside of having just had it end.