“I can’t listen to this anymore.”
My mother-in-law’s chair scraped across the kitchen floor.
I shut off the faucet, leaving Noah’s bottles in the sink. From the living room, my five-month-old son let out another desperate cry.
“I’ve got him,” I called.
But Diane Carter was already standing.
For months, I had called her difficult. Cold. Controlling.
Standing in my kitchen that Sunday afternoon, with water dripping from my fingers, I suddenly wondered whether those words had been too gentle.
Sunlight fell across the counter. The air smelled of warm formula. Beyond the kitchen doorway, Noah lay in his bassinet, asking for the only thing a baby his age knew how to ask for.
Someone to come.
He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t injured.
He had simply been fussy all morning, and every time he cried, Diane sighed as though he were doing it to offend her.
Her coffee sat untouched.
Earlier, she had watched me move between the sink and the living room, picking him up, settling him, returning to the bottles.
Then she put her mug down.
“You spoil that child.”
I looked over my shoulder.
“He’s five months old, Diane.”
She shook her head slowly.
“That’s what you young mothers always say.”
I reached for the towel.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you don’t know when to stop.”
My hands went still.
“Stop what?”
“Picking him up every time he makes noise. Running every time he wants something.”
She glanced toward the living room.
“You’re teaching him that crying gets him attention.”
I followed her gaze to the bassinet.
“He’s a baby. That’s literally how he communicates.”
Diane leaned back in her chair.
“He needs to learn.”
I waited for something softer to follow. An explanation that would make those words sound less cruel.
Nothing came.
Ryan would have known what to say about his mother.
“That’s just how Mom talks.”
Or, “She means well.”
Whenever I brought up her comments, my husband rubbed the back of his neck, and somehow the conversation became about whether I had misunderstood her.
He had left around noon to pick up groceries.
“I’ll be back in forty minutes,” he told me, kissing Noah’s forehead.
Diane smiled.
