She cuddles in the lapdog after raising her voice, “why do you think I’m talking to you? You’re a good dog.” And other pleasantries. The Jack Russell is crying, whining more like it. Abused badly before she ever reached Grandma, she cries all the time and seeks validation, which Grandma gives in spades.
She turns to a show about a dystopian global blackout, and complains, “You’re going to do that to us again, huh?”
She’s in a somber mood after sleeping the rainy day away. The night ends uneventfully.
She woke up at midnight and couldn’t get back to sleep. Around 5 am she started cleaning the house. She did some dishes. Cleared the kitchen table, then went upstairs to pee. In the upstairs hallway was some dog poop, flattened, someone already having stepped on it and ignored it. Annoyed, Grandma bent down to pick it up.
As she bent down, she noticed the shut bedroom door for the first time, a giant hole adorned through the top.
“WHAT!?!?” She screamed, a panic-attack rising inside her.
Turns out, the youngest grandson hadn’t just punched the adult undergarments, he had also punched and wrecked the bedroom door in his anger at waking up late the other morning. Another bit of the house destroyed without her say. Another worry for her with housing when they do the next check-in.
She doesn’t wake the boys, instead heads downstairs to pace. She calls her friends in a panic, but no one answers. It’s too early. Now she panics that she will lose her housing. This grandson not only officially moving out with housing and leaving her overhoused, but now sleeping over most nights anyway and damaging it in the process. That’s two strikes against Grandma with housing. They already want her out of that house. This is like a nail in the coffin.
Grandma is in full panic now, knowing inside that she is going to be moved to the Indigenous flop-house with all the alcoholics and addicts. She calls a friend again, to no response. She takes an extra pill for her heart and tries to calm herself.
The kids wake up slowly. One by one. The youngest up first, ready to go to his shift. She talks to him as calmly as she can. Trying to keep her heart regulated. He shrugged it off, barely answering her except to say, “yes,” when told he would have to pay for a new door. He exits and leaves for work.
Grandma spends the rest of the morning crying alone. Trying to regulate and unable to. Panic continually rising. Her friend wakes and finally calls her in the early afternoon. The conversation starts in full blown panic, the friend barely able to understand her words. Piecing together what happened from crumbs. Grandma slowly begins to regulate, even laugh. Not because anything is funny, necessarily, but that’s what her nervous system does when it’s found a safe place to land.
The friend reassures her they’ll get the door figured out. That they’ll get the housing figured out.
“It will all work out, in the end.”
Maybe it will.
For now Grandma can breathe.
What do you do when the thing you fear most is losing the only place you have left to call home?
If this story resonates with you, please restack or share it so it can reach someone who might see their own family in these pages.
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