To say “I love you.”

I was on the phone with my mother the other day, and right before we hung up she said, “Love you.” I was taken back for a moment. She doesn’t say that she loves me all that often. But to be fair, I don’t say it to her all that much either. Our relationship got complicated when I was 9 and my father left. It got damaged when I ran away from home at 14. My father didn’t say that he loved me all that often either, but he was in and out of jail a lot, and frankly he just wasn’t really around to say it.

My siblings, we don’t say it much. Living through family trauma does this, I suppose.