A silence.
“Grace, if you’re just a little patient with this transition–“
“I am being patient. I’m also being practical. These aren’t in conflict.”
She said she understood. The call ended in its normal way — she mentioned a dinner coming up, I said I’d check my schedule, we said we loved each other, which is true regardless of what the conversation contained.
I want to be fair to my mother. She was not trying to exploit me. She was trying to hold the family together in the way she always held the family together: by asking the person who had the most flexibility to be a little more flexible, a little more patient, a little more accommodating. The person who had the most flexibility in our family was always me. Luke was being groomed for succession. Victor was the owner. I was the eldest daughter, which in the specific language of family businesses means the person who facilitates.
I had been facilitating for eighteen years.
What I was learning, in those weekly calls and in the weeks between them, was that the ending of my formal employment had not automatically ended my informal role. The informal role was still available, still being offered to me, still presented as the right thing to do. The assumption was that if I just stayed available, everything could continue in roughly the same way, with me providing the knowledge and the stability and the continuity, just without the paycheck.
I was done facilitating for free. This took me longer than it should have to say out loud, but I got there.