I Worked As An Unpaid Maid For My Son For Three Years Only To Hear Him Call Me “Furniture.” Then I Discovered He Stole My $385,000 House Behind My Back. Am I The Jerk For Suing My Own Child?
Seen As Furniture
“Why pay for daycare when Mom’s sitting at home doing nothing?” That’s what my son said.
He was standing in the kitchen doorway, phone pressed to his ear, talking to his wife like I wasn’t 3 ft away chopping onions for their dinner. I heard every word.
He didn’t even lower his voice. “She’s already here. Might as well make herself useful.” The knife stopped mid-chop.
I stood there, 68 years old, arthritic fingers wrapped around a blade making beef stew from scratch for a family that saw me as furniture. My son Derek hung up and walked past me without a glance.
“Smells good,” he said, grabbing a soda from the fridge. “Megan’s working late. Can you handle bath time tonight?”
I didn’t answer. He didn’t wait for one. Three years.
That’s how long I’d been living in my son’s guest room, sleeping on a mattress that sagged in the middle, surrounded by boxes they never bothered to move. When my husband Frank passed, Derek had driven down to help me pack.
“Come stay with us for a while,” he’d said, his hand on my shoulder. “The kids miss you. We all do.”
I believed him. “God help me, I believed him.”
From Mother to Employee
The first few months felt like family. I’d make breakfast, help with homework, read bedtime stories. It was nice, purposeful.
Then Megan got promoted. Then Derek started traveling for work. Then “a while” became indefinitely.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped being their mother and became their employee. Except employees get paid.
Every morning I woke at 6:00 to pack lunches. Toast cut diagonally for Sophie. Crusts removed for Jake, apple slices not oranges because Megan read somewhere that citrus disrupts focus.
I made beds that weren’t mine, folded laundry that wasn’t mine, scrubbed bathrooms I barely used. When the kids came home from school, I helped with math problems and science projects and social drama that made my head spin.
By the time Derek and Megan walked through the door at 7 or 8, dinner was ready. The house was spotless, and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.
“Thanks, Mom,” Derek would say, sometimes barely looking up from his phone. “That was the extent of my gratitude.”
Two words tossed over his shoulder like spare change. “I kept my condo in Tucson. That was the one thing I insisted on.”
40 years of marriage, 30 years in that little two-bedroom with the lemon tree out back. Frank and I had paid it off in 2010. It wasn’t fancy, but it was mine.
Derek thought I was being sentimental. “You’re paying HOA fees on a place you’re not even living in,” he said once. “That’s money down the drain.”
But I held firm. “Some part of me knew even then that I might need somewhere to go.”
