I swore that would never be you.
But I also watched your mother’s family hand their kids everything, and I watched those kids grow up unable to stand on their own two feet, and when the hard times came — and they always come — those kids broke.
I was so afraid of both things. Of you having nothing. And of you never learning how to build something.
So I did the only thing my stubborn, uneducated heart could think of.
I charged you rent, so you would learn how to earn, and budget, and survive a cut in hours and a car that breaks down. So that the world could never do to you what it did to me at nineteen.
And I saved every dollar of it, and I added to it with everything I had, so that when the lesson was done, you would also have the cushion I never had.
