I Sold the House My Kids Were Fighting Over (Continued)

You should have heard the phone calls. Panic, every one of them. ‘Mom, what have you DONE?’ As if I’d set fire to their inheritance instead of my own front porch.

I told them, calmly, that the house was mine to sell, that the money was mine to spend, and that I intended to spend a good deal of it seeing the country I’d only ever read about.

And I have. I’ve watched the sun come up over the Grand Canyon. I’ve eaten pie in a diner in Tennessee and pecans straight off a tree in Georgia. I send each of my children a postcard from every state, which I think annoys and delights them in equal measure.

Here is what I’ve learned. I love my children with my whole heart. But somewhere along the way they’d stopped seeing me as a person with a life still to live, and only I could remind them.

I’ll leave them something in the end — I’m frugal, and there’ll be plenty. But first, I’m going to live. If your family has already spent your life for you, my darlings, take it back. It’s still yours.