We spent nearly an hour going through the document.<\/p>\n
The tea grew cold.<\/p>\n
Graham moved his cup aside so he could spread the pages across the table.<\/p>\n
I kept my notebook open beside me.<\/p>\n
Whenever something wasn't clear, I wrote it down.<\/p>\n
He seemed irritated by that at first.<\/p>\n
Then he stopped commenting on it.<\/p>\n
I asked him to explain the purpose of each section.<\/p>\n
Some answers were straightforward.<\/p>\n
Others led to more questions.<\/p>\n
I didn't pretend to understand something just because he used confident words.<\/p>\n
That was one of the habits I had decided to break.<\/p>\n
For years, I had allowed Graham to explain complicated things to me and then nodded before I was certain I understood.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he was right.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I had simply been too embarrassed to ask him to repeat himself.<\/p>\n
I had mistaken that embarrassment for respect.<\/p>\n
It wasn't respect.<\/p>\n
It was fear of appearing foolish in front of my own child.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to feel that way anymore.<\/p>\n
When we reached the last page, I placed the papers on the table.<\/p>\n
"I need more time with this."<\/p>\n
Graham pressed his lips together.<\/p>\n
"How much time?"<\/p>\n
"I don't know yet."<\/p>\n
"We can't leave everything unresolved indefinitely."<\/p>\n
"I'm not asking you to."<\/p>\n
He rubbed his forehead.<\/p>\n
"I just want us to move forward."<\/p>\n
"Then we need to agree on what moving forward means."<\/p>\n
He looked at the notebook.<\/p>\n
"You're writing everything down?"<\/p>\n
"I'm writing down the things I need to understand."<\/p>\n
"Why?"<\/p>\n
"Because I don't want to forget what we've discussed."<\/p>\n
He seemed about to respond.<\/p>\n
Then he stopped.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had finally understood how little confidence I had in our conversations.<\/p>\n
Not in my memory.<\/p>\n
In the conversations themselves.<\/p>\n
Too often, I had left a discussion feeling that I had agreed to something when I had only agreed to stop arguing.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to do that again.<\/p>\n
Graham gathered a few loose pages into a neat stack.<\/p>\n
"You could have just told me you weren't comfortable with it."<\/p>\n
"I did."<\/p>\n
"Not at first."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"At first, you brought me a document and expected me to sign it."<\/p>\n
He looked away.<\/p>\n
I felt a pang of sadness.<\/p>\n
I didn't enjoy reminding him of his mistakes.<\/p>\n
I had never enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
When Graham was young, I used to lie awake worrying that I had been too strict with him.<\/p>\n
If I corrected him, I wondered whether I had hurt his feelings.<\/p>\n
If I let something go, I worried that I had failed to teach him responsibility.<\/p>\n
There was no perfect answer.<\/p>\n
I had done the best I could.<\/p>\n
But somewhere along the way, I had begun treating his discomfort as evidence that I had done something wrong.<\/p>\n
That was unfair to both of us.<\/p>\n
He needed to be able to hear a difficult answer.<\/p>\n
I needed to be able to give one.<\/p>\n
"Mother," he said, "I know you don't like being pressured."<\/p>\n
I almost smiled.<\/p>\n
"Nobody likes being pressured."<\/p>\n
"I didn't mean it that way."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
He looked at me as though he expected me to continue.<\/p>\n
I didn't.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I had spent so much time explaining what I meant that I had given other people permission to ignore what I actually said.<\/p>\n
I was learning to stop.<\/p>\n
Graham finally put the folder back together.<\/p>\n
"Can I take these with me and bring them back after we've made a few adjustments?"<\/p>\n
"Yes, as long as I receive a complete copy of the revised version."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"Of course."<\/p>\n
I watched him slide the papers into the folder.<\/p>\n
There was a time when I would have been satisfied with that promise.<\/p>\n
I would have thanked him and assumed everything would be handled properly.<\/p>\n
Now I wanted the promise to become something concrete.<\/p>\n
"When you have the revised copy, send it to me before we arrange another meeting."<\/p>\n
He looked up.<\/p>\n
"All right."<\/p>\n
"And I want enough time to read it."<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
We sat quietly for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then Graham asked whether I had been enjoying the warmer weather.<\/p>\n
It was such an ordinary question that I almost didn't know how to answer.<\/p>\n
I told him I had been walking in the garden in the mornings.<\/p>\n
He asked whether the plants were doing well.<\/p>\n
I showed him the view from the window.<\/p>\n
For a few minutes, we talked like mother and son again.<\/p>\n
He remembered a plant his father had bought years earlier.<\/p>\n
He asked whether it was still alive.<\/p>\n
I told him it was.<\/p>\n
He smiled.<\/p>\n
"That thing survived everything."<\/p>\n
"So did I," I said.<\/p>\n
The words came out before I could stop them.<\/p>\n
His smile faded.<\/p>\n
I hadn't meant them as a joke.<\/p>\n
I hadn't meant them as an accusation, either.<\/p>\n
I had simply spoken the truth as I felt it.<\/p>\n
Graham looked down at his hands.<\/p>\n
"I know you've had a hard time since Dad died."<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
"It wasn't easy."<\/p>\n
"I should have been around more."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
He had never said that so plainly before.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I wanted to reach across the table and tell him not to worry.<\/p>\n
I wanted to say that he had been busy, that he had his own family, and that I had managed.<\/p>\n
Those things were all true.<\/p>\n
But they weren't the whole truth.<\/p>\n
"You could have called more," I said.<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
The room became very quiet.<\/p>\n
I could hear a car passing outside.<\/p>\n
The clock on the wall ticked steadily.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether he would say anything else.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to force him.<\/p>\n
After a while, he stood.<\/p>\n
"I should get going."<\/p>\n
I rose with him.<\/p>\n
At the door, he hesitated.<\/p>\n
"I'll send you the revised papers."<\/p>\n
"Thank you."<\/p>\n
He hugged me.<\/p>\n
This time, the embrace lasted long enough for me to feel that he was actually there.<\/p>\n
I held him for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I stepped back.<\/p>\n
He left.<\/p>\n
I watched him walk to his car.<\/p>\n
He looked tired.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had spent as much time worrying about our relationship as I had.<\/p>\n
Probably not.<\/p>\n
But perhaps he had begun to think about it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe that.<\/p>\n
I closed the door and returned to the living room.<\/p>\n
The two tea cups were still on the table.<\/p>\n
I carried them into the kitchen and washed them.<\/p>\n
Then I opened my notebook and read what I had written.<\/p>\n
I had a list of questions.<\/p>\n
I had a promise that revised papers would be sent.<\/p>\n
I had a memory of Graham admitting that he should have called more often.<\/p>\n
It wasn't much.<\/p>\n
But it was more than I had had a few days earlier.<\/p>\n
That evening, I took the old photograph of Graham and his father from the cabinet.<\/p>\n
I placed it on the table beside the notebook.<\/p>\n
I looked at the boy in the photograph.<\/p>\n
He had been so earnest.<\/p>\n
He wanted to do things correctly.<\/p>\n
He wanted his father to be proud of him.<\/p>\n
I had always assumed that the desire would stay with him.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it had changed shape.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he now measured himself by the people he worked with, the responsibilities he carried, and the things he believed he needed to achieve.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know.<\/p>\n
I only knew that the boy in the photograph would never have wanted me to feel frightened of asking him a question.<\/p>\n
I returned the photograph to the cabinet.<\/p>\n
Then I made dinner.<\/p>\n
Nothing special.<\/p>\n
Soup and bread.<\/p>\n
I ate at the kitchen table and listened to the radio.<\/p>\n
For once, I didn't keep checking my phone.<\/p>\n
I had said what I needed to say.<\/p>\n
The next step belonged to Graham.<\/p>\n
I couldn't make him take it.<\/p>\n
I couldn't make him understand me.<\/p>\n
I could only decide what I would accept.<\/p>\n
That realization was uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
It was also a relief.<\/p>\n
We spent nearly an hour going through the document. The tea grew cold. Graham moved his cup aside so he could spread the pages across the table. I kept my … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38075,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38055\/revisions\/38075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}