When my mother-in-law, Diane, sold her house in March, she asked to stay with us for six weeks while her new condo was being finished.
I agreed without hesitation.
Six weeks was manageable, I thought. No big deal.
Diane had been a widow for three years. Mark’s dad, Frank, died of a heart attack shoveling snow off the driveway the winter Noah was born. She’d stayed in their big old colonial on Birch Street for three more years, rattling around in four bedrooms by herself. Mark worried about her constantly. The stairs. The roof. The gutters. The furnace that made noises like a dying animal.
So when she finally sold the place and bought a little two-bedroom condo in a new building near the river, Mark was so relieved he almost cried.
“The builder says it’ll be ready the first week of May,” Diane told us over Sunday dinner. “But my closing on the house is in March. I hate to ask, but—”
“Stay with us,” I said, before Mark could even open his mouth.
I meant it. I liked Diane. Mostly. She was loud and opinionated and had never once in eight years let me load a dishwasher without commenting on it. But she’d raised a good son. She adored Noah. And she’d been lonely since Frank died. I could see it in the way she lingered at our door after visits. The way she always found one more thing to say.
“Six weeks,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”
I even went out and bought her a nicer pillow for the guest room. Memory foam, with a cooling gel layer. Forty-five dollars. Mark laughed at me when I brought it home.
“She’s not royalty, Claire.”
“She’s your mother,” I said. “She’s family.”
I believed that, then. That family meant you made room. 