After My Son Kicked Me Out, He Expected Me To Beg. But I Was Already Gone… And I Took Everything…
The mornings always began the same, like a scene that refused to change no matter how many years passed.
Before the first sliver of daylight crept through the blinds of my son’s two‑story house on a quiet cul‑de‑sac outside Columbus, Ohio, I was already in the kitchen. The subdivision was the kind you see in Midwest real‑estate flyers—maple trees planted at perfect intervals, flags on porches, neighbors jogging with insulated coffee cups.
Inside, though, my world had shrunk to a few square feet of linoleum.
I measured out coffee grounds by muscle memory, listening to the slow drip of the machine. I heated the pan and cracked eggs the way Saurin liked them—firm whites, no runny yolk, two slices of wheat toast, crusts on. He never said thank you, but I’d stopped expecting it years ago.
Instead, I listened for the familiar shuffle of his slippers overhead, the creak on the third stair, the little cough that meant he was on his way down.
My timing was always perfect. Breakfast hot. Pills sorted by day and hour in the little plastic box.
His newspaper folded beside his mug—the Columbus Dispatch he liked to flip through while the morning news hummed from the TV.
After my husband died, the small ranch we’d shared on the edge of town felt too quiet, too wide. The neighbors still waved from their driveways, the mail still came, the Ohio State flags still fluttered on game days, but every room in that house echoed with his absence.
I had nowhere else to go—at least that’s what I told myself. Not really.
My daughter, Maribel, had her own family and a job teaching at a public school in another town. And though she never said it out loud, I didn’t want to be a burden.
So when my son, Saurin, said I could stay with him temporarily—he’d paused on that word, like it was a warning—I packed my things and moved in. That was nearly seven years ago.
At first, I tried to make it feel like home.
I brought my own curtains, soft blue ones with tiny white flowers, the ones my husband used to tease me about because they made the kitchen look like “a bed‑and‑breakfast in Vermont.” I stacked my recipe books on the counter, pages stained with oil and tomato sauce from decades of meals.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
