I never thought I would reach the day when my own child would tell me to leave her home. Mothers picture so many things when they imagine their children growing up, graduations, weddings, careers, maybe grandchildren one day. They don’t imagine being cast aside like an old piece of furniture that no longer fits the décor. Yet there I was, sitting at the kitchen table in my daughter’s house, staring at the cold cup of tea I hadn’t touched, while she stood across from me with her arms crossed, her face hard and unyielding.
“There’s no room for you here anymore,” she said. “You have to leave.”
Her words sliced through me sharper than any knife.
For a moment, I couldn’t even process what she was saying. I thought perhaps I had misheard her. Maybe she was upset about something else, maybe she was stressed from work or an argument with her husband. But no—the determination in her eyes told me she meant every word.
