There was something strange about having such a large number attached to my name.<\/p>\n
I could see it on the check.<\/p>\n
I could read it without difficulty.<\/p>\n
Yet it still felt distant from my ordinary life.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars.<\/p>\n
I had never planned around a sum like that.<\/p>\n
I had never expected to be asked what I would do with it.<\/p>\n
I had never thought my grandmother would be the person to put that question in front of me.<\/p>\n
And I still couldn't treat the money as available.<\/p>\n
The bank had explained the remaining steps.<\/p>\n
I understood why they were necessary.<\/p>\n
That didn't make waiting pleasant.<\/p>\n
I wanted the matter resolved so I could stop wondering whether the check would pass the full review.<\/p>\n
But I also knew that a decision from the bank wouldn't settle every question I had.<\/p>\n
Even if the transaction proceeded, I would still need to understand what Grandma had intended.<\/p>\n
I had begun to see that I was hoping one answer would solve two separate problems.<\/p>\n
The first was practical.<\/p>\n
Could the bank complete the transaction?<\/p>\n
The second was personal.<\/p>\n
Why had Grandma written the check?<\/p>\n
I couldn't use the answer to one question as proof of the answer to the other.<\/p>\n
The check might be valid without my understanding the reason behind it.<\/p>\n
That was an obvious statement.<\/p>\n
It took me longer than it should have to accept it.<\/p>\n
I kept imagining what I would say if someone asked whether I believed the money was really mine.<\/p>\n
I would have to explain that the initial findings were encouraging, but the bank still needed to complete its procedures.<\/p>\n
I couldn't honestly promise anything beyond that.<\/p>\n
The answer would sound cautious.<\/p>\n
It would also be accurate.<\/p>\n
I had to learn to accept that accuracy was more important than sounding certain.<\/p>\n
The same applied to my thoughts about Grandma.<\/p>\n
I could say that she had written the check.<\/p>\n
I could say that the bank had found the initial details consistent with a valid transaction.<\/p>\n
I could say that several relatives had also received checks.<\/p>\n
I couldn't say why.<\/p>\n
I couldn't say what she expected us to do.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't say what the decision revealed about her beyond the fact that she had chosen to make it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know more.<\/p>\n
That desire wasn't wrong.<\/p>\n
What would have been wrong was pretending that wanting an explanation gave me the right to invent one.<\/p>\n
I thought about how often people did that.<\/p>\n
Someone made a decision, and everyone around them began supplying motives.<\/p>\n
A gift became a statement.<\/p>\n
A silence became a refusal.<\/p>\n
A delay became a sign of distrust.<\/p>\n
Sometimes those interpretations were correct.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they weren't.<\/p>\n
Without evidence, it was impossible to know.<\/p>\n
I had spent years teaching students to examine the difference between a character's actions and a reader's interpretation of those actions.<\/p>\n
Now I was learning the same lesson in a far less comfortable setting.<\/p>\n
My grandmother's check was an action.<\/p>\n
Its meaning remained uncertain.<\/p>\n
I couldn't erase that uncertainty by deciding what I wanted the action to mean.<\/p>\n
I also couldn't ignore the practical responsibility attached to a transaction of that size.<\/p>\n
The bank had to complete its work.<\/p>\n
I had to wait.<\/p>\n
The other family members had their own checks and their own circumstances.<\/p>\n
I couldn't assume that everyone would respond in the same way.<\/p>\n
I couldn't even assume that the check meant the same thing to each recipient.<\/p>\n
The amount on mine was clear.<\/p>\n
The personal significance was not.<\/p>\n
I found that distinction difficult, but I was beginning to understand it.<\/p>\n
Money could be counted.<\/p>\n
A signature could be compared.<\/p>\n
An account could be examined.<\/p>\n
Intentions were harder.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to turn my grandmother into a mystery simply because I couldn't explain her decision.<\/p>\n
She was still the person I knew.<\/p>\n
The check had changed my understanding of what I knew about her, but it hadn't erased the relationship we had.<\/p>\n
I needed to leave room for both truths.<\/p>\n
I knew her.<\/p>\n
I didn't know everything.<\/p>\n
And I had to be honest about the difference.<\/p>\n
There was something strange about having such a large number attached to my name. I could see it on the check. I could read it without difficulty. Yet it still … <\/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-39250","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\/39250","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=39250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39270,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39250\/revisions\/39270"}],"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=39250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}