I flew across the country to meet my newborn granddaughter with a handmade blanket in my bag and thirteen hours of travel in my bones. My son took one look at my gift, called it cheap, and shut the door in my face. That night, I left something else on his porch, and by morning his life was on fire.
The lamp above my kitchen table flickered as the needle slid through the soft pink fabric one more time.
My legs throbbed under me, propped up on the wooden stool that had held me steady for thirty years.
The quiet of the little farmhouse pressed gently against the windows.
Outside, the cornfields stretched dark and endless. Inside, tiny white flowers were taking shape in every corner of a blanket meant for a baby I had never met.
Holding it up to the light, I smiled.
“She’s going to love it,” I whispered to no one.
“She has to.”
I reached for the phone the way I always did on Sundays, knowing there was no guarantee Jason would pick up.
He answered on the fourth ring.
“Hi, Mom. What’s up?”
“Jason, honey, I have a little surprise for Phoebe.”
A pause.
A television murmured in the background.
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat.
“I’d like to meet her.”
“Mom, you don’t have to do that. Olivia’s parents are here. Her sister too.
It’s already a lot.”
The blanket pressed against my chest.
“I won’t be in the way, sweetheart.
Just want to hold her once. Just once.”
He sighed the way he always did now.
Like I was a chore.
“Do whatever you want. I’ve gotta go.”
The line went dead before any goodbye could leave my mouth.
For a long while there was only the hum of the old refrigerator.
Memory drifted in.
Jason at four, climbing into my lap with sticky fingers, calling me Mama like it was the most important word in the world.
Now I barely got a hi.
But bitterness wasn’t allowed in my kitchen. He was my boy. He always would be.
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