‘They’re doing well,’ she reported, with exactly the tone she’d have used about the rose.
There is something both poignant and reassuring about this: that my mother, who had spent twenty-seven years tending a climbing rose on a fence that was no longer hers, had within four months found something else to tend. That this is, perhaps, less about any specific yard or any specific place and more about having growing things to pay attention to.
I don’t know if that thought is sentimental. Maybe it is. But it felt true when I thought it.
## Where This Leaves Us
My parents are in the apartment. Adam’s business is growing. My house is mine, my office is mine, my work schedule is intact.
I have dinner with my parents more consistently than before. My father fixes things when he comes over, which is his version of contributing to my life. My mother brings food, which is hers. Adam texts me sometimes just to check in, which he didn’t used to do. Maya is a consistent presence at family gatherings and has the particular quality of someone who makes a room easier to be in, which I value.
None of this is perfect. My mother still occasionally assumes rather than asks — I caught her starting to describe a plan for a family dinner at my house before checking whether I was available on the proposed date, and I said ‘actually, can you ask if that works before assuming’ and she said ‘you’re right, sorry, does that date work’ and I said yes. Small, continuous recalibrations.