Querido hijo, estás despedido
Starting today, you are fired from being my central occupation. I am retiring from motherhood as a full-time job. I will be a consultant: available for emergencies, holidays, and the occasional jar of your grandmother’s pickled onions. But I will no longer lose sleep because you sent a vague ‘I’m fine’ text. I will no longer rearrange my calendar around your visits. I will no longer feel guilty for having fun while you work late.
I love you. But your shift is over.
Querido hijo, estás despedido.
You are fired, querido hijo, so that I can hire myself. My new role: a woman who takes salsa lessons on Tuesday nights, who buys the expensive coffee, who might adopt a dog even though you’re allergic. My new project: the rest of my life. querido hijo estas despedido
Not from loving you. Never from that. But from the job you didn’t ask for and I didn’t know I gave you: the job of being my reason. My reason to wake up early. My reason to save money I don’t spend. My reason to avoid traveling, to stay in this house with the leaky roof, to postpone my own dreams of painting in a seaside village.
“You have been a good son for twenty-six years. You have called on Sundays, remembered my birthday, and even cried at your father’s grave. But this letter is not about the past. It is about the position you currently hold in my life: the role of ‘my child, my project, my unfinished business.’ Querido hijo, estás despedido Starting today, you are
He mailed it the next day. And for the first time in years, his mother’s reply was not a phone call, but a postcard. On the front: a beach. On the back: “Deal. Now stop writing letters and go change your oil.” End of write-up.