Don’t become one of those people who thinks exhaustion is a personality.
I kept that note for years.
My mother handled things differently.
She wanted photographs.
Locations.
Stories she could repeat at dinner parties.
She wanted to know who I worked for and whether I had met anyone important.
When I couldn’t answer, she treated it as an insult.
“You always have a secret,” she would say.
“Mom, there are things I can’t discuss.”
“Convenient.”
That word followed me through adulthood.
Convenient.
When I missed Thanksgiving because of duty, it was convenient.
When I couldn’t tell her where I had spent the previous three months, it was convenient.
When I declined to describe an assignment in front of her friends, it was convenient.
Eventually, I stopped trying to convince her.
I learned that there was no way to satisfy someone who considered boundaries a personal attack.
Dad never asked me to try harder.
He simply answered the phone when I called.
And when he became ill, I found ways to be there.
Not every day.
Not every appointment.
I was still serving.
But I visited during approved leave, took calls from doctors when Dad authorized them, and arranged my schedule around the worst periods whenever possible.
The first time I saw him after his diagnosis, he looked smaller.
He was sitting in the living room beneath the yellow lamp he had repaired three times rather than replace.
A blanket covered his knees.
My mother had gone grocery shopping.
Liora was upstairs.
Dad saw me standing in the doorway and smiled.
“There she is.”
I crossed the room so quickly that I nearly knocked over the side table.
When I hugged him, I could feel the sharpness of his shoulder blades.
I hated it.
I hated that illness had changed his body while I had been away.
I hated that there were emergencies I could not anticipate.
Most of all, I hated that my mother had already begun referring to my absences as evidence that I did not care.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Dad held me at arm’s length.
“For what?”
“Not being here more.”
He shook his head.
“You came when you could.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“That isn’t a measurement you get to make alone.”
He said it firmly.
Then he squeezed my hand.
“Your mother is tired. Your sister is scared. And I know you have obligations. None of those things cancel the others.”
I wanted to believe him.
