I sat in the enclosed sunroom, mending the same cotton camisole I had worn for over three years, my needle moving back and forth under the dim yellow light. The fabric at the shoulder strap was worn so thin it was nearly transparent, and it tore a little more with every wash, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. My fingers moved through the cloth, a motion so practiced I hardly needed to look.
At my age, I had spent the better part of a lifetime mending things, and I never thought it would still be this way in my old age. I heard the sound of a key turning in the lock of the front door, and then my son Kevin and my daughter-in-law Brenda came in with my grandson Leo. From the sound of it, they were in high spirits, their laughter seeping in from the living room.
I quickly tucked my mending into my sewing basket, covering it with an old newspaper. “Mom, we’re home,” Kevin called, his voice still buzzing with the excitement of whatever party they had been to. “Oh, good.
You’re back,” I answered slowly, pushing myself to my feet and rubbing my aching lower back. At sixty-one, my body would get stiff and sore if I sat hunched over in a chair for too long. When I walked into the living room, I saw the coffee table piled high with shopping bags.
Brenda was excitedly pulling things out. “Mom, look at this,” she said, holding up a blue backpack with an English logo printed across it. “This is a new backpack for Leo.
It’s an international brand. Even at fifty percent off, it was still over a hundred fifty dollars. So many of his classmates have this brand—we can’t let our Leo fall behind.”
I nodded silently, calculating that over a hundred fifty dollars was more than half of my grocery budget for a month.
But seeing the happy look on my grandson’s face, I swallowed the words before they could come out. “Mom, why are you wearing that blouse again?” Kevin suddenly frowned, looking at the faded floral shirt I had on. “Didn’t I buy you a new one last time?”
I looked down at myself.
The blouse was perfectly fine, and it didn’t matter what I wore around the house. “Oh, you have no idea how embarrassing it was today, Mom,” Brenda cut in, her voice turning sharp. “The CEO’s wife quietly asked me, ‘Why is your housekeeper dressed so shabbily?’ I told her, ‘That was my mother-in-law,’ and you should have seen the look on her face.” She rolled her eyes dramatically.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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