What Do I Say to I Love You?

Awkward! That’s an understatement. How do you reply to someone who ends a phone conversation with “I love you”? Not just anyone, but your mother. There’s a catch. She gave birth to me but never raised me. In fact, she abandoned us, as some of you have already read in my earlier publications.

I’m not feeling it. I don’t even understand how she could feel love for me. She barely knows me. Mom left us when I was a toddler. I didn’t even meet her until I was twelve. Since that disastrous stay with her, I’ve spoken to her maybe four times.

The conversations are always the same. We have cordial question-and-answer sessions, such as checking weather updates or discussing a project. There is no depth to the chats. They are very brief and infrequent, like Haley’s Comet. I am usually left in awe, as if I have just witnessed a unicorn in real life, but not in a good way. I don’t get it. Why does she even bother?

There is no warmth of a long-lost family member you dearly miss. It is a very generic experience that leaves more questions than answers after it’s over. It feels like one of those calls you have to answer, a speech you have to listen to through to the end. You know the one. You call somewhere and get that encyclopedic menu of options that won’t let you hit a number until it finishes the list. All I am thinking is “end call”.

I suppose it would be one thing if she genuinely showed interest in anything related to Alexandra, but she doesn’t. How could she? She knows nothing about me. The most basic conversation that might show interest would be about my son. But no. She never asks about him; she never even acknowledges that I had a child. That right there is a grandparent’s whole existence, isn’t it? Their grandkids. It's an age-old joke, the one about the grandparent asking if you have seen a picture of their grandkids and then whipping out a photo album from some Mary Poppins bag you didn’t see behind their back. Nope. Crickets cue here….

I understand it a little. She has no connection to him. She has no knowledge of him. She has never once asked to speak with him or to learn who he is as a person. It’s all so weird. It’s another dimension, really. It’s a parallel universe you have never been to. You are thrown into it without a map or a legend for the parameters of the foggy landscape. And then you are expected to make friendly banter with the natives who do not speak your language. You don’t know theirs either.

What makes the conversations even more bizarre is that the duration of the chat is not proportional to the amount of data the caller is trying to collect. Each time I receive a call from my mother, it literally feels like she is calling at gunpoint, not like it is an “I’m dying to talk to you” thing. So why bother? Really.

Obligation. She has none to me at this point. She owes me nothing, and I owe her nothing in return. If she didn’t feel obligated to stay and mother my sister and me when I was two, then trying that now won’t fly. There is no trust there.

I have trust issues stemming from her abandonment to begin with, so I have no intention of sharing my collection of memories from my life. I keep my life close to the vest. What I do let out for consumption is small and carefully limited. I can’t bring myself to share my mind, heart, sorrows, or histrionics with her. Would you? I mean, it’s like a stranger knocks at the door. Do you let them in and offer a place to stay? Or do you courteously nod and listen to their pitch before you kindly excuse yourself with an “I have to go”? I am in the middle of weaving a tapestry of an otter haven, and I was at a crucial point, rethreading a needle. You know, that kind of excuse.

Please understand. I do not hold any ill will toward her. I understand why she left. Dad was not someone I would have wanted to stay with, though I had to. She gave me no choice. I have made my peace with the reasons and have forgiven her, even though she never brings it up. That right there makes it even more like an episode of Outer Limits or the Twilight Zone. It’s as if it never happened. The white woolly mammoth is not even in the vicinity of the room.

Since I am pretty sure you have the picture in your head clearly, you understand why I get the closing arguments in this sequence of events. She always ends the conversation with I love you.

Silence.

Well, in my head, there is a pregnant pause of silence at the precipice of a canyon that divides us. It all happens quickly. The conversations don’t even last more than 3 or 4 minutes.

The first couple of times I received calls from her, my knee-jerk response was to say it back. I did. Then it hit me. Those words have to mean something. Saying them that way, without the actual sentiment, makes them worthless.

I thought about it deeply. I felt sick inside after I had said them and hung up. It was a lie. I hate lying. I don’t ever do it intentionally. And here I was, lying. All to make her feel good, or out of misplaced contrition for the call. I never said it again. Not to my mom.

I can’t bring myself to misuse the word that has moved mountains, inspired poetry and romantic prose. I can’t share that with her, then tell my husband or son that I love them, and then believe it meant something special.

So, in the extremely rare times she calls after that day, I just end my part of the call with “I’ll talk to you later” or “take care.” Even that feels insincere to me. And then I hope I won’t have to experience that again for a long time.

Is that wrong of me? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t hold a grudge or any animosity toward her. I don’t. To feel those emotions, you have to have some feelings for the person or situation that evokes them. I have none toward her. She is a stranger of her own making. I am just a particle of dust that lingers in a corner of her dark closet, never to be seen or addressed.

I’m okay with that. I’ve been okay for a long time. I dusted my closet years ago.

(Published by Quirky Rants on Medium, June 2026)

#family #relationships #love #writing #confessions