But kids aren’t stupid. She knew. And when the truth finally came out, she climbed into my lap and whispered, “Don’t leave me like Mommy and Daddy, Grandma.”
“Never, sweetheart,” I promised, pressing my lips to her hair. “You’re stuck with me now.”
Raising a child at my age wasn’t what I’d planned. My knees screamed every time I bent down to tie Emily’s shoes. My pension barely covered groceries, let alone school supplies and dance classes. There were nights I sat at the kitchen table, staring at bills I couldn’t pay, wondering if I was enough.
But then Emily would shuffle out in her too-big nightgown, crawl into my lap with a storybook, and say, “Read to me, Grandma?”
And I knew. She was my reason to keep going.
A sad young girl | Source: Unsplash
Years flew by. Suddenly, my little girl graduated high school, then college, and then brought home a young man named James who looked at her like she hung the moon.
“Grandma,” she said one Sunday afternoon, her cheeks flushed pink. “James asked me to marry him.”
I dropped the dish I was washing. “What did you say?”
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