The next thing I had to confront was my own impatience.<\/p>\n
I wanted answers immediately.<\/p>\n
I wanted the bank to finish its review, and I wanted someone in my family to explain why Grandma had done this.<\/p>\n
Those were two different things.<\/p>\n
I knew the bank couldn't provide the second answer.<\/p>\n
Still, I found myself thinking about the conversation with Edward.<\/p>\n
He had been careful not to promise more than he could establish.<\/p>\n
At the time, I had wanted him to be more definite.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I was grateful he hadn't pretended to know everything.<\/p>\n
There was no reason for him to guess at my grandmother's intentions.<\/p>\n
He had a responsibility to the bank and to the transaction in front of him.<\/p>\n
I had a responsibility not to confuse his professional assessment with an explanation of my family's circumstances.<\/p>\n
That distinction should have been obvious.<\/p>\n
It wasn't.<\/p>\n
The amount on the check kept pulling my attention away from everything else.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars.<\/p>\n
I could say the number easily enough.<\/p>\n
Understanding what it meant was another matter.<\/p>\n
I had never organized my life around the possibility of receiving money like that.<\/p>\n
My work had given me a familiar routine.<\/p>\n
I taught literature.<\/p>\n
I read student assignments.<\/p>\n
I prepared lessons and tried to make complicated books understandable to people who often wanted nothing more than to finish their homework.<\/p>\n
My life had not been built around a sudden change in financial circumstances.<\/p>\n
Now I was trying to imagine what such a change would mean before the bank had even completed its review.<\/p>\n
I caught myself doing it more than once.<\/p>\n
Each time, I stopped.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to plan around money that was not yet available.<\/p>\n
More importantly, I had no explanation for why Grandma had chosen to give it to me.<\/p>\n
I could think of ordinary reasons.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she wanted to help the family.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she had considered the matter carefully and decided that this was the right way to distribute what she had.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she had a personal reason for choosing the amount.<\/p>\n
But those were possibilities, not facts.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to mistake a plausible explanation for a true one.<\/p>\n
The same problem applied to the other recipients.<\/p>\n
I couldn't assume my parents knew more than I did.<\/p>\n
I couldn't assume Eric had been told something privately.<\/p>\n
I couldn't assume Olivia, Aunt Diane, or Uncle Martin understood the decision any better than I did.<\/p>\n
I had no evidence for any of those ideas.<\/p>\n
All I had was the list of people who had received checks.<\/p>\n
That list kept returning to me.<\/p>\n
It made the situation feel deliberate.<\/p>\n
Grandma had not written a check to one person and forgotten the others.<\/p>\n
She had included six members of the family.<\/p>\n
I couldn't ignore that.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't explain it, either.<\/p>\n
I realized that I was looking for certainty because uncertainty made me uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
If I could find one clear reason for the checks, perhaps the rest of the situation would become easier to accept.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't manufacture that reason.<\/p>\n
The truth was that I didn't know enough.<\/p>\n
I had to admit it.<\/p>\n
That admission felt small, but it changed how I looked at the situation.<\/p>\n
Instead of asking myself what Grandma must have meant, I began asking what I could actually establish.<\/p>\n
The answer remained limited.<\/p>\n
The check appeared genuine.<\/p>\n
The bank had more work to do.<\/p>\n
The other family members had also received checks.<\/p>\n
Everything else required information I didn't have.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I allowed that answer to stand without trying to improve it.<\/p>\n
I could wait.<\/p>\n
I could listen.<\/p>\n
And when I finally learned more, I could decide what the facts meant without pretending I had known all along.<\/p>\n
The next thing I had to confront was my own impatience. I wanted answers immediately. I wanted the bank to finish its review, and I wanted someone in my family … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39245","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\/39245","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=39245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39265,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39245\/revisions\/39265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}