Parents Who Help With an Invoice

They helped. When they could. Which was kind. Except it always had to be paid back. Which was less kind.

My parents are not bad people. I need to say that upfront because what follows might sound like I think they are and I don’t. I think they’re limited. I think they love in the only way they were taught, which is transactional. Which is to say: everything has a cost and love is no exception.

When I left my marriage and had nothing, they helped. Money for food. Money for the deposit. Money for the things that Universal Credit doesn’t stretch to, which is most things when you’re starting from zero with two children and a dignity that’s been in storage for thirteen years.

They helped. And they kept a ledger.

Not a physical one. Nothing so crass. But the debt was tracked. Referenced. Occasionally mentioned in conversations that were about something else entirely but somehow circled back to the time they lent me three hundred pounds in November and wasn’t I going to sort that out soon.

Emotional support was not on the menu. It never had been. My mother doesn’t do feelings. She does practicalities. She does meals and lifts and the occasional fifty pounds in a card. But if you try to tell her you’re struggling. If you try to open the door to the actual, raw, ugly truth of what you’ve been through. She’ll change the subject so fast you’ll get whiplash.

My father is better at listening. Worse at acting on it. He’ll nod. He’ll say something vague about it being difficult. Then he’ll go back to whatever he was doing and the conversation will exist in a space between us that neither of us will ever reference again.

I love them. I do. But I love them the way you love a house with bad plumbing. You live in it. You’re grateful for the roof. You just know that certain things don’t work and probably never will.

They helped. I paid it back. Every penny. Because the alternative was carrying a debt that would be referenced at every family gathering until one of us died.

And that, in our family, is what love looks like.

Terms and conditions apply.