Poor People Don’t Go To Fancy Places. YOU Stay Home!’ My Daughter-In-Law Said…

After that was Christmas, the Christmas where I had saved for months to buy them nice gifts. I bought a watch for Michael and a leather purse for Kate.

They weren’t expensive designer things, but it was the best I could afford on my pension. I wrapped them carefully and put on gold bows.

I took them to their house on the morning of December 24th. Kate opened the door in a robe with wet hair, as if she had just gotten out of the shower.

“Eleanor, what a surprise,”

she said.

She didn’t sound surprised; she sounded annoyed.

“I didn’t know you were coming today,”

she added.

“Michael told me we were having dinner together on Christmas Eve like always,”

I replied.

She stayed quiet for a moment, then she sighed.

“Eleanor, this year we decided to spend Christmas alone. You know, start our own traditions as a couple. I hope you understand.”

“Alone? But what about me?”

I asked.

“You can celebrate with your friends, with Susan or someone from the neighborhood. Don’t stay alone.”

She took the gifts from my hands.

“Thanks for the thoughtful gesture. We’ll open them later.”

The door closed before I could say anything else. I stood on the porch in the cold afternoon of Christmas Eve, alone, empty-handed, and heartbroken.

I walked back to my house and spent Christmas Eve watching television. I ate the leftovers of the dinner I had prepared, thinking they would share it with me.

I never knew if they opened my gifts. They never thanked me, and they never called to wish me a Merry Christmas.

Then there were the times I called and they didn’t answer. There were the times I texted them and they replied with one-word answers days later.

There were the times I drove past their house and saw the car in the driveway, but when I knocked on the door, no one opened. I heard their voices inside, but they pretended not to be there.

I got up from the sofa and walked to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. My hands were still shaking.

I opened the refrigerator and saw the food Kate had mentioned. It was a container with leftovers of something that didn’t even look appetizing.

That was what they had left me: leftovers. That was what I was to them—a leftover from their perfect life.

I took my phone out of my apron pocket and opened the photo app. I started scrolling through social media.

There were photos of Michael and Kate at fancy restaurants, on trips to the beach, and at parties with friends. All were posted with perfect smiles and happy captions, and I appeared in none of them.

There was a photo from three weeks ago of Kate’s birthday at a restaurant surrounded by people. Everyone was toasting and laughing, but I didn’t even know it had been her birthday.

No one had told me, and no one had invited me. I used to always buy her a gift and bake her a cake, but this year I didn’t even know she had a birthday.

More photos showed a trip to the mountains two months ago. Michael had told me he would be busy with work and couldn’t visit me that weekend.

But there he was, smiling next to a bonfire with Kate and a group of friends. He was lying and hiding from me.

Then I saw the most recent photo from a week ago: a dinner at Kate’s parents’ house. The caption said, “Family reunited.”

But I wasn’t there because I wasn’t family, not to them. I closed the phone and left it on the table.

The pain in my chest was so intense I could barely breathe. All those times I had justified their absence, it had all been a lie.

I told myself they were busy or that it was normal for children to drift away. They weren’t busy; they simply didn’t want to be with me.

I sat back down at the kitchen table, the same table where I had prepared thousands of meals for Michael. This was the same table where I had helped him with his homework and where we had eaten breakfast together every morning for 18 years.

Now that table only reminded me of everything I had lost. I thought about all the times Kate had made comments about my life.

“Eleanor, you should update your wardrobe. Those dresses are very out of style.”

She would talk about my house.

“This part of the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be. You should think about moving to something smaller.”

She would talk about the way I spoke.

“Eleanor, when we’re in public, try not to talk so much about your cleaning work. People aren’t interested in those kinds of things.”

I always stayed quiet and always nodded. I always tried to change to please her because I thought if I did everything right, they would accept me.

But now I realized it had never been enough, and it never would be. The problem wasn’t me; the problem was that they were ashamed of me.

I looked at the wall clock; it was 10:00 at night. They must be at the steakhouse right now, sitting at some elegant table and eating expensive food.

They were laughing with important people while I was here alone, excluded and forgotten. And they were there with the money I myself had given them three months ago.

That money—$3,000—I had saved for years. Every dollar was earned with my sweat, with my hands cracked from scrubbing floors, and with my knees aching from kneeling to clean other people’s bathrooms.

Michael had told me he needed it for an important investment that was urgent. He said he would pay me back soon.

I gave him everything without asking questions because you don’t say no to your children. Mothers give without expecting anything in return.

But now I knew the truth. That money hadn’t been for any investment.

That money had been for this dinner, for this luxurious celebration from which I was excluded. My own money was paying for my humiliation.

I got up and walked to my bedroom to take out the notebook where I kept my accounts. I turned the pages with trembling hands.

Everything was written down there—every dollar I had lent Michael in the last five years. There was $2,000 for the down payment on the car and $5,000 for the renovation of his house.

There was $1,000 for his vacation last year and now these $3,000 for the dinner. That was $11,000 in total.

It was $11,000 he had never paid back and probably never would. Children don’t pay mothers back because mothers are supposed to give out of love, not expecting anything in return.

I closed the notebook and put it back in the drawer. The tears fell again, but this time they weren’t just tears of sadness.

They were tears of rage, of helplessness, and of disappointment. All the pain accumulated over years was finally finding an exit.

I looked at myself in the vanity mirror. I saw a 65-year-old woman with a tired face, deep wrinkles around her eyes, and gray hair poorly combed.

I saw the woman Kate saw: the poor woman, the embarrassing woman, the woman who didn’t fit in. But I also saw something else.

I saw the woman who had survived 40 years of hard labor. I saw the woman who had raised a son alone and who had sacrificed everything for love.

That woman didn’t deserve this. That woman was worth more than the treatment she was receiving.

I stood in front of the mirror for a long time looking at that tired woman staring back at me. She was a woman who had allowed all of this and who had accepted every humiliation with her head bowed.

She was a woman who had believed that unconditional love meant allowing anything. I turned off the light in my room and went back to the living room.

I sat on the sofa again and let the silence wrap around me. This time the silence was different.

It wasn’t the silence of pain; it was the silence of clarity. It was the silence that comes when you finally stop lying to yourself.

They had erased me from their lives, slowly, with small lies and credible excuses. They had been erasing me like erasing an old drawing until only the blank paper remained.

And I had let them do it. I had justified every lie and forgiven every oversight because I was afraid of being left alone.

I was afraid of losing the only son I had. I was afraid of admitting that maybe my sacrifice had meant nothing to him.

I picked up my phone again and looked for my own photos—the photos of my life before they decided I was an embarrassment.

There I was at 25, young and smiling with baby Michael in my arms. His father had just left us without a dime in my pocket, but I was smiling because I had hope.

Another photo showed Michael at seven years old on his first day of school. I was crouching next to him, and my cleaning uniform was peeking out from under the sweater I had put on to take him.

I had missed work that morning to accompany him. I lost that day’s pay, but I didn’t care because my son needed me.

More photos followed, including Michael at his high school graduation. I was standing proudly beside him in my best dress, the same dress I had worn to three weddings because I didn’t have money for another one.

I was happy because my son was graduating with honors. All the effort had been worth it.

The last photo we had together was from two years ago on my 63rd birthday. Michael had come to visit me alone because Kate supposedly had a headache.

We were sitting in this very living room, and I had made my own cake. Michael looked uncomfortable in the photo, as if he wanted to be somewhere else.

That had been the last time we had spent time alone. It was the last time I had felt I was still his mother.

After that, everything changed. The visits became shorter, the calls rarer, and the excuses more frequent.

I just watched him drift away without being able to do anything to stop him. I put the phone aside and closed my eyes.

I took a deep breath. The pain in my chest was still there, but there was something else—something that looked like acceptance.