When my mother-in-law finally got the weekend with my daughter she’d been asking for, I thought my biggest worry would be letting go. But when we arrived to pick her up, one sentence changed the way I saw the entire visit.
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My mother-in-law was already standing on the porch when we pulled into the driveway, holding a sheet of paper in one hand.
Ellie’s bag was packed beside her.
“Now, don’t panic,” Diane said as Marcus and I climbed the steps. “It’s just so everything’s transparent.”
I stopped walking.
“Transparent about what?”
She smiled and handed the paper to Marcus.
He looked down at it, and the smile disappeared from his face.
Just minutes earlier, we’d been laughing in the driveway.
Ellie had appeared in the doorway wearing her swimsuit, a towel around her shoulders, and the biggest grin I’d seen all summer.
“Mommy!”
She ran straight toward me.
I’d barely gotten my arms around her before she started talking.
“Grandma let me steer the boat! Not really steer it, but I held the wheel, and we saw another heron!”