“But every time I wanted something,” he said, “I pictured the bank taking the house. I pictured my kids hungry. I pictured my body quitting before my bills did.”
He looked back at me.
“And that fear… it works,” he said. “It makes you disciplined.”
Then his jaw tightened.
“But it also makes you mean.”
My breath caught.
Frank looked down at his hands.
For the first time, I saw them not as “tough hands.”
As hands that had carried a life.
Hands that had held onto control so hard they forgot how to relax.
Frank exhaled.
“I don’t want you living like me,” he said.
I blinked.
“You don’t?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I want you to be free.”
He pointed at the notebook.
“But freedom costs something,” he said. “And right now you’re paying for comfort instead.”
I sat there in the quiet kitchen, the air smelling like toast and pine cleaner, and I felt something in me shift.
Not into motivation.
Into grief.
Grief for how hard it was to live now.
Grief for how hard it was back then.
Grief for how both generations were right and wrong in different ways, and how the only thing we seemed to do with that truth was turn it into a fight online.
I looked at the list again.
“People are going to argue about this,” I said quietly.