Because I Said So

She let her head drop into her hands. How was she going to make it? She let the floating thoughts in her brain settle for a moment as she sat silently defeated at her desk. Her computer screen lit in red marks as her budget loomed in the rectangular portal of the spreadsheet before her. She knew of only one solution. Moving. She knew it was inevitable since the death of her husband. She would not be able to afford to continue her current lifestyle. Oh, how she longed for the days when she was innocently unaware of the reality of budgetary constraints. She had lived so many years in her own bubble of wealthy ignorance. She only recently managed to gain an understanding of a budget. A spreadsheet had been a foreign concept to her prior to the adult education course she took to become more self-sufficient.

This home was too large anyway, she thought as she justified her decision. How was she to break the news to her daughter? This was the only home her daughter was familiar with. Her mind worked through the different scenarios of telling her daughter of their need to move. As she pondered the possible paths down which the conversation could lead, every scenario ended in agony… for the both of them. She decided the best method was to be direct.

Her daughter had not handled her father’s death well. She secluded herself from her mother thinking she could handle the grief on her own. She disappeared into her social media every day after school. Their conversations were scant now, unlike the fruitful and abundant discussions from elementary school years. Their life had been so different back then, just a few short years ago. Mother yearned for a connection with her daughter like they had before. She felt the time and silence drive a greater distance between them. She wondered how to handle this new, unfamiliar environment and circumstance. This weighed heavier on her shoulders than any financial difficulties could.

As the days mulled into weeks, she tried to mentally prepare herself to remain calm as she readied herself to explain, or justify, the decision to her teenage daughter. “Hun… let’s talk.” Her daughter grunted her acknowledgement of her mother’s request as she continued to flip through videos on her phone, barely looking up. “We have to move, sweetheart.”

Her daughter’s eyes dilated as if a fire stoked deep in her soul. The bowels of hell flaring to life from their long slumbering embers. The phone, surprisingly forgotten, slipped from between atrophied fingers as an almost palpable stirring began to rise. Spine straightened out of posture honed by years of slouching as the energetic fight began to accumulate in her core. Lips parted as a long, dramatic intake of breath fed into the pregnant pause, like the calm before the storm. Just when it felt as all the air was sucked from the room, her daughter belched three words which began a stream of verbalization unheard of in the past decade of her life. “Mother!! You can’t!!!” Her mother drew in a breath of her own to respond. Before she could even utter a syllable, the daughter engaged in her diatribe. “How could you do this to me?... What do you expect me to do?... I have friends… I have school… I can’t believe you would do this to me! This is not fair! You’re ruining my life!“ On and on she continued. Mother couldn’t work in a word. The breathless verbal assault continued for what seemed an inhumanly long, word-filled interval of time. Mother’s eyebrow raised as she gawked in awe of the verbalization coming from her daughter. Where were all these words when her mother had tried to hold conversations with her regarding her day-to-day well-being?

As if possessed by an overacting, flamboyant drama major, her daughter flung herself from her position on the couch and dropped like a deflated air mattress onto the hardwood floor as her words turned to tearless sobs. “Whyyyyyyy? Whyyyyy? Whyyyyyy?” The hardwood flooring rebounded the sobs up to her mother’s ears. Mother’s eyes widened in surprise and her own lips parted in a silent gawk. She was unsure of how to react to her daughter’s surprising tantrum. She had not seen a tantrum like this for many years. In fact, the last tantrum witnessed was when her daughter was about three. She supposed it was fitting for a teenager. She tried to shiver off the surprise and readied her words.

Mother began to attempt to describe the reality of a single-parent income and the need to downsize to a more affordable dwelling. The words fell on deaf ears as the sobs continued. “But…. But… whyyyyyyyy??” Exasperated, surprised, and at her wits end, mother let the determined calmness slip from her control and forcefully screamed over the sobs, “BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!” The sharpness in her voice caught the still tearless, sobbing teenager. The teenager’s breath stuck in her chest. She sat up and with pouted lips hissed, “FINE! Where?” Now tears began to stream down her reddened cheeks as she already felt the loss of her friends and familiarity of her school. Her heart sank deeper in her chest as each second passed. She drew in a jagged breath as the tears began to flow more freely.

The room quieted as their gaze locked. The tension continuing to peak as each second slowly ticked by. The silence thumped in both of their ears as they waited in the tension-thick room. After what seemed an incredibly long pause, mother licked her lips and drew in a steadied breath. Her head cocked slightly to the side and she gazed out of the corner of her eyes, prepared for any reaction. Her words were slow and determined. “Across... the... street.” She blinked slowly. The shock of the statement was obvious on her daughter’s face. The moment was paused as they both repeatedly blinked in amazement. The daughter’s tearful, shocked face suddenly perked into an unexpected burst of laughter. They both began to laugh. Had this been the breakthrough they needed to start re-building their relationship?