I arrived at the holiday brunch with my kids carrying a white bakery box tied with red-and-blue string, the kind you only buy when you really want to show someone you tried. The front door was already cracked open, a fake wreath hanging crooked, a tiny sun-faded American flag stuck in the plastic branches like an afterthought. Inside, the TV was blaring some morning game show, lights too bright for a Sunday, the air already thick with bacon grease and cheap cologne.
My dad didn’t get up. He just smirked over the rim of his glass. “This was meant to be a nice day,” he said, his voice loud enough to carry past the doorway and into the dining room.
“Why did you come?”
My son looked up at me, one hand still on his little sister’s backpack strap. “Should we leave?” he whispered. I held his gaze for a beat that felt like a year.
“Yes,” I said. “Right now.”
No drama. No raised voice.
Just a quiet pivot. We turned around, my daughter’s braids brushing my arm, the white bakery box still perfectly intact in my hands. Behind us, the game show contestants kept shouting answers, and that faded little flag on the wreath fluttered when the door shut.
An hour later, Dad regretted his words. I’m Nancy. I’m the daughter who always says yes.
The one who shows up, covers the bill, takes the phone calls at 2:00 a.m., and hands over money even when I barely have enough for myself. If my family had a motto, it would be: “Nancy will figure it out.”
The last month alone, I sent over $700 to my parents. Half of it was for my dad’s “urgent” car repairs, which—funny enough—turned into a brand-new outdoor smoker and a pair of Bluetooth headphones for his walks.
He even texted a photo of the smoker with a thumbs-up emoji, as if I should be proud to have funded his new weekend hobby. A few weeks before that, my mom asked for help paying her dental bill, then posted a photo from a spa day with a friend in a hotel suite. White robes, champagne glasses, the whole girls’ getaway package.
I didn’t even ask. I never do. They’ve always been like that—comfortable taking, almost allergic to giving.
Selfish, but embarrassingly proud of how little they return. My mom told me once that having me at seventeen ruined her body. I was ten.
She said it while checking herself in the hallway mirror, tugging at her shirt, like I was the stain that wouldn’t come out. That was the first moment I understood what it meant to be an obligation, not a daughter. My dad, when he’s drunk—and that’s often—likes to joke that if “being careful” hadn’t been so expensive in the ’90s, he’d have a boat by now.
