Do they still need me to come?
By Delia Marchetti, Staff writer · · 2 min read
Do they still need me to come on Saturdays?
A woman asked me this in a parking lot in Muncie. She has been going to her daughter's every Saturday for nine years. The grandchildren were five and two when it started. They are fourteen and eleven now.
She used to be the afternoon. She brought the craft thing. She took them to the park so her daughter could sleep. She was the reason Saturday worked.
Now she arrives and the fourteen-year-old says hi from the stairs. The eleven-year-old is at a friend's. Her daughter is glad to see her and also has errands. She sits in the kitchen for an hour and a half and drives home.
"I don't know if I'm visiting or in the way."
I asked if she had asked her daughter. She said she could not, because if the answer was that she did not need to come, she would stop coming, and she did not want to stop coming. So she would rather not know.
I said that seemed like a reasonable thing to not want to know.
She said she was going again this Saturday. She said she was bringing a pie, which nobody had asked for. She said that at least the pie would get eaten.
I did not have anything better to offer than that. I am not sure there is anything better.