My daughter smiled a little too wide when she handed me the tea, and that was the first moment my stomach went still. Nothing about it was obvious—no strange smell, no odd color—just a brightness in her eyes that didn’t match the room or the season, and the way she leaned forward like she was watching my hands instead of sharing a holiday.
Karen had never cared what I drank before. Most years, she barely looked up from her phone during our Christmas visits, half-present in the way grown kids can be when they’ve already decided you’re background noise. But this time she practically glowed as she said, “I made this one special for you, Mom. Chamomile with honey, just how you like it. Drink it while it’s warm.”
I didn’t answer right away. I looked at the tea—pale gold steam curling up from the rim of my favorite blue mug—and then I looked at my son-in-law, Richard, who was suddenly very interested in adjusting the Christmas tree lights across the room. His cup sat untouched on the coffee table next to mine, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the years of catching them whispering in the kitchen when they thought I couldn’t hear, or the way they exchanged glances whenever I mentioned my savings, my house, or—heaven forbid—my doctor’s appointments. Whatever it was, I reached over and switched our cups as casually as moving a coaster.
Richard didn’t notice. No one noticed except Karen.
She stiffened for a fraction of a second—barely anything, the smallest hitch in her shoulders—but I saw it, and I felt it in my bones. Her smile faltered as she said, too quickly, “Wait—no, Mom. That one’s yours. I made it special.”
But I’d already taken a sip from his cup.
Plain black coffee. Bitter and cold.
I nodded politely like nothing had happened, like I was just an old woman enjoying a holiday morning. And then I waited.
Fifteen minutes later, Richard complained he felt dizzy. Twenty minutes after that, his words started sliding together, thick and careless, and when he tried to stand he couldn’t quite find the floor the way a healthy man should. At the half-hour mark, Karen was on the phone with someone, speaking in hushed, frantic tones while I sat perfectly still on the floral couch, watching the Christmas lights blink red and green against the frost-covered window.
No one asked how I felt. No one even remembered we’d switched cups.
The next morning, Richard claimed he’d had too much eggnog the night before. Karen laughed it off and said he always overdid it during the holidays, like it was a harmless family joke, like I was supposed to join in. But I saw the way she looked at me across the breakfast table, the way her jaw tightened when I asked for more coffee.
I hadn’t felt dizzy. Not a tremor, not a moment of confusion. And at sixty-eight, I’d learned to pay attention to what my body told me. Richard was forty-two and healthy as a horse. Whatever had been in that tea, it wasn’t meant to kill me.
It was meant to make me look fragile. Confused. Unfit.
After breakfast, I told them I needed to rest, then I drove myself home three hours early. Karen protested, said I shouldn’t drive alone, said they’d planned a special dinner—but I was already backing out of the driveway, watching her figure shrink in my rearview mirror like a problem getting smaller only because I was putting miles between us.
That night, I sat in my kitchen with the lights off, listening to the quiet.
Something inside me had shifted. Not fear—I wasn’t afraid. It felt more like the moment before a storm when everything goes still and you know the world is about to crack open. I realized I’d been blind for too long. I’d let them smile at me with teeth like razors, tell me how much they loved having me for the holidays while maneuvering around me like I was just another antique from their childhood they hadn’t figured out how to throw away yet.
But that Christmas morning, I’d seen it clear as glass.
And for the first time in years, I wasn’t going to let it slide.
I didn’t sleep. Not out of worry for Richard—though I did wonder what, exactly, Karen had put in that tea—but because my mind kept replaying the morning moment by moment, like someone rewinding an old VHS tape, searching for the exact second the lie began.
My kitchen still smelled faintly of the cinnamon candles I’d lit on Christmas Eve. I left one lamp on—the brass one Harold had given me for our thirtieth anniversary—and sat at the table with my reading glasses and a cup of plain water. At two in the morning, my phone buzzed with a message from Karen.
Hope you got home safe, Mom. Richard’s feeling better. Call me tomorrow.
No apology. No real concern. Just a status update, like I was a distant acquaintance on a mailing list.
I didn’t reply.
At 3:15, I walked to the filing cabinet in the spare bedroom—Harold used to call it my worry box, because I kept every important paper we’d ever put our names on—and I pulled out the folder Karen had given me last Easter.
“Just some updated paperwork for your coverage, Mom,” she’d said, sliding it across my kitchen table with that same helpful smile she’d used since she was twelve and wanted something. “The hospital requires it now. You know how bureaucracy is.”
I’d signed it. Of course I had. Who wouldn’t help their own daughter?
Now, sitting on the edge of the guest bed, I read every word.
It wasn’t what she’d told me it was. It was a legal authority form—durable, broad, airtight—giving Karen control over my finances and medical decisions if I were ever deemed incapable. My hands didn’t shake.
They went cold.
I flipped to the last page. My signature—rushed, slanted, familiar—stared back at me from the bottom line like proof of my own mistake. I hadn’t understood what I’d agreed to. And if that tea had made me confused, if I’d ended up in a hospital bed disoriented and unable to speak clearly… what then?
Would someone have declared me unfit?
Would Karen have taken over everything?
Something inside me settled. Not panic. Not grief.
Resolution.
First thing in the morning, I called my lawyer.
“Daniel,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I need you to look at a document for me, and I need to change my legal authority arrangement today.”
There was a pause, and then his calm voice. “Of course, Mrs. Patterson. Can you come in this afternoon?”
I looked at the clock. “I’ll be there in two hours.”
And I was, because some storms don’t announce themselves with thunder. Some begin quiet, slow, inevitable, and they wash away everything you thought was safe.
Daniel Westbrook had been our family lawyer since Harold and I bought this house in 1987. His hair was silver now, his glasses always perched just right, his navy suit the kind that looked like it cost more than my first car. When I walked into his downtown office, he was already waiting in the lobby.
“I looked at what you scanned over,” he said gently as he led me into his office. “Did you bring the originals?”
I handed him the folder. He read slowly, adjusting his glasses twice, then held up the final page like it might change if he stared long enough.
“Did you understand what you were signing here, Mrs. Patterson?”
“No,” I said calmly. “I trusted my daughter.”
He nodded once, a flicker crossing his face—pity, maybe, or recognition. “This grants broad authority. Not just for medical matters. It includes finances, property, even decisions about where you live, if you’re deemed mentally incapable.”
I didn’t react. I’d already gone cold inside.
“Do you feel mentally incapable?” he asked, not smiling.
“I drove myself here in a snowstorm,” I said. “I balanced my accounts yesterday, finished the Sunday crossword in pen, and I’m currently beating my neighbor Walter at online chess. He’s a retired professor.”
That made him smile briefly. “I’d say you’re more than fine. Would you like to revoke this?”
“I would,” I said. “And I’d like to draw up a new one with my grandson Tyler as the sole designee.”
Daniel blinked. “Not Karen?”
“Not Karen.”
He nodded, firmer this time. “We should also prepare a new living will and discuss trust options if you’re thinking about protecting your estate.”
“I’m ready,” I said. More than that, I was certain.
We spent the next two hours drafting everything. I had him read every word aloud, then I read them again myself. No rushing. No distractions. When it came time to sign, my hand was steady as stone.
By the time I left his office, the snow had stopped and the late afternoon sun was breaking through the clouds. I felt lighter than I had in months, like I’d taken off a coat I didn’t realize I’d been wearing.
Back home, I made tea—real tea from a sealed box I’d bought myself—and sat in the kitchen with the radio on low, the way Harold used to like it. Outside, the bare branches of the old oak scratched against the gray sky like fingers reaching for something they couldn’t quite touch.
I opened a drawer and pulled out my household ledger. For forty years, I’d tracked every expense—not out of obsession, but because I believed in knowing where things stood. I flipped to the last two years and skimmed the pages.
Three thousand for Karen’s “emergency” car repair.
Eight hundred for Richard’s “business investment” that never materialized.
Fifteen hundred for their kitchen renovation because the contractor “needed a deposit immediately.”
And then the big one: twenty-two thousand last spring for what Karen called a short-term loan to get through a rough patch. She’d cried on my couch, told me they might lose the house, told me I was the only one who could help. I’d written the check that same afternoon.
It was all there in my neat handwriting. Every dollar. Every time I’d nodded and said, Of course, sweetheart.
I closed the book.
Not anymore.
At 5:30, my phone rang. Karen.
I stared at the screen until it stopped. She didn’t leave a message. Ten minutes later, a text came through.
Mom, we need to talk. Can I come over tomorrow?
I didn’t reply.
At seven, my phone rang again. This time it was Tyler—nineteen years old, quiet and thoughtful in ways his mother had never been. He was in his second year at state, studying engineering, calling me every Sunday like clockwork.
“Grandma,” he said softly, “I need to tell you something.”
I sat down slowly. “Go ahead, honey.”
“I don’t know if I should say this. Maybe it’s nothing, but at Christmas, before you got there, I heard Mom and Dad talking in the kitchen. Dad asked if everything was ready, and Mom said yes—that you’d be compliant by New Year’s. I didn’t know what they meant, but it sounded… weird.”
My throat tightened. “Did they see you listening?”
“No. I was in the hallway getting my charger. They didn’t know I was there.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “You did the right thing.”
There was a pause. “Grandma… are you okay? Mom’s been saying stuff lately. That you’re getting forgetful. That maybe you shouldn’t be living alone anymore.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m not forgetful, sweetheart. I think I’m the only one seeing clearly.”
“I believe you,” he said quietly. “I always believe you.”
After I hung up, I stood at the window and watched the streetlights flicker on one by one. They thought they were clever. They thought they’d slide me gently into silence, into invisibility—a staged moment here, a concerned phone call there, then the quiet legal takeover.
They’d forgotten who I was.
I raised two children. I buried a husband. I ran the accounting department at Morrison Manufacturing for twenty-three years, and no matter how sweetly someone smiled, they weren’t going to erase me from my own life.
The bank manager’s name was Christine Park—young, professional, with a handshake firm enough to crack walnuts. When I told her I needed a full review of my account activity and any active authorizations on file, her expression shifted from pleasant to serious in half a second.
“Of course, Mrs. Patterson,” she said. “Let me pull up your records.”
She clicked through several screens, eyes scanning left to right. Then she paused, clicked again, and her forehead creased.
“There’s an active joint authorization,” she said slowly, “for a recurring transfer to an external account in the name of Karen Mitchell.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Seven hundred and fifty a month,” she said. “It’s been running since August. It’s categorized as family support.”
My jaw tightened. “Cancel it immediately.”
“I can,” she said, “but I should mention it was set up under an authority document we have on file.”
“That document is no longer valid,” I said. “I revoked it yesterday. My lawyer is sending you the updated paperwork today.”
She nodded. “Understood. I’ll flag your account for in-person verification only—no phone or online changes without you present.”
“Good,” I said.
Before I left, I asked her to print the last eighteen months of statements. She handed me the stack with a look that told me she’d seen this before. Maybe not with me, but with someone.
When I got home, I spread the pages across my kitchen table and read them line by line. The seven-fifty monthly transfers, yes, but also random withdrawals—four hundred here, six hundred there—a charge to a furniture store I’d never visited, a payment to a medical supply company I didn’t recognize. At the bottom of one statement, a flagged transaction.
Emergency withdrawal. Two thousand dollars.
I never made that withdrawal.
But Karen had access.
I looked out at the gray January sky and made another decision. This wasn’t confusion. This wasn’t family helping family. This was theft dressed up in Christmas sweaters and good intentions, and I was going to treat it exactly as what it was.
Karen showed up unannounced three days later.
I saw her car pull into the driveway and watched from the kitchen window as she checked her reflection in the side mirror, practiced her smile, then walked up the path with a casserole dish in her hands like some kind of peace offering.
I opened the door before she could knock.
“Mom,” she said brightly, lifting the dish. “I brought your favorite chicken and rice, just like you taught me.”
She smiled so wide it almost looked real.
I didn’t step aside. “What do you want?”
Her smile flickered. “Can’t I just visit my own mother?”
“You can,” I said. “You don’t. What do you want?”
She adjusted her grip on the dish, irritation pressing through her voice. “Fine. I’m worried about you. You left Christmas early without saying goodbye. You haven’t answered my calls. Richard thinks maybe you’re going through something.”
“Richard was barely conscious Christmas morning,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust his assessment of much.”
Her eyes narrowed, just slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not confused, Karen. I’m not forgetful. And I’m not signing anything else.”
For a second, the mask slipped. Something cold flashed behind her eyes before she smoothed it over with feigned concern.
“Mom,” she said softly, “you’re scaring me. This isn’t like you. Maybe we should talk to someone—a doctor—just to make sure everything’s okay.”
“I’ve talked to someone,” I said. “My lawyer and my bank.”
Silence.
She stared at me. The casserole dish steamed under the foil like a warning.
“You went to the bank,” she said.
“I saw the transfers,” I said. “Every single one. The seven-fifty a month. The emergency withdrawal. The furniture charges for furniture I never bought.”
“That was all authorized,” she snapped. “You said we could.”
“I never authorized theft,” I said.
Her face flushed red. “I am not a thief. I’m your daughter.”
“Then act like one,” I said.
I took a breath, steadied myself, and kept my voice even. “Your access has been removed. Any further attempts will be flagged and reported.”
She laughed, brittle and sharp. “Reported? To who? The police? You think they’ll believe some paranoid old woman over me?”
I smiled for the first time all morning. “I’m sixty-eight years old, Karen. I’ve been managing money since before you were born. I have documentation. I have records. And I have a lawyer who’s been waiting for this conversation.”
She stood there, silent, the dish growing heavier in her hands.
“You can keep the chicken,” I said, and I closed the door.
Two weeks later, Tyler came to visit. He’d driven four hours from campus just to sit in my living room and eat the oatmeal cookies I’d made. He looked tired, the kind of tired that comes from being stuck in the middle of something you didn’t choose.
“Mom’s furious,” he said quietly, picking at a cookie. “She says you’ve lost your mind. She says you’re cutting off the family.”
“I’m cutting off people who tried to steal from me,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”
He looked up. “Did she really try to… drug you?”
I paused. “I don’t know what was in that tea. But I know what was supposed to happen if I drank it. And I know it wasn’t good.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone.
“I recorded something,” he said. “The night after you left Christmas. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I kept it… just in case.”
He pressed play.
Karen’s voice came through thin and sharp. “She wasn’t supposed to switch the cups. The whole thing was ruined. We were so close.”
Richard’s voice, lower, frustrated. “So what now?”
“We wait,” Karen said. “We find another way. She’s old. People will believe us eventually. We just need to be patient.”
Tyler stopped the recording. His hands shook slightly.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” he said. “I should’ve told you sooner.”
I reached out and held his hands in mine. “You told me now,” I said. “That’s what matters.”
He swallowed. “What are you going to do?”
I looked at him—this boy who’d grown into someone decent despite everything. “I’m going to protect myself,” I said. “And then I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of properly this time.”
He didn’t ask what I meant. He just hugged me hard, the way he used to when he was small and the world hadn’t taught him to be careful yet.
Daniel called me into his office two days later. The trust documents were ready, everything laid out clean and clear: my house, my savings, my investments—wrapped in legal protection Karen couldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole and a team of lawyers.
“I’ve named Tyler as the primary beneficiary,” I said, signing the last page, “with a provision that Karen receives nothing if she contests the trust or attempts to challenge my competence.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “That’s aggressive.”
“That’s clarity,” I said.
He smiled and slid the paperwork into a folder. “I also prepared what you asked for,” he said. “A formal letter to your daughter outlining the changes and the reasons behind them. Delivered with verification required.”
“Send it,” I said.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “This will likely end your relationship with her.”
I looked at him across the desk. “She ended it when she tried to steal my life,” I said. “I’m just making it official.”
The letter went out that afternoon. I didn’t wait by the phone. I didn’t check my email. I went home, made dinner, and watched the evening news like it was any other Tuesday.
At 8:30, my phone rang. Karen. I let it ring.
Then it rang again. And again.
Finally, a voicemail. “Mom, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but this is insane. You can’t just cut me off. I’m your daughter. We need to talk about this like adults. Call me back.”
I deleted it.
At 9:15, another one. “Fine. If this is how you want to play it, fine. But you’re making a huge mistake. You’ll regret this. You’ll regret all of it.”
I deleted that one too.
At ten, I turned off my phone, made myself a cup of chamomile from a fresh box, and sat by the window watching the stars appear one by one through the winter clouds. For the first time in months, I didn’t feel afraid. I didn’t feel manipulated. I didn’t feel old.
I felt like myself again—sharp, clear, whole.
The months that followed were quiet in the best way. I repainted the guest bedroom. I took a watercolor class at the community center. I started volunteering at the library on Thursdays, shelving books and helping kids with their homework. Tyler called every Sunday without fail. He was doing well in school, had a girlfriend now, was talking about graduate programs.
He mentioned his mother only once, briefly, to say that she and Richard had moved to Arizona.
“Apparently they couldn’t afford the house anymore,” he said, not quite hiding his satisfaction. “They’re renting an apartment in Phoenix.”
“I hope they find what they’re looking for,” I said, and I meant it in the way you mean it when you finally let something go.
Spring came early that year. The daffodils I’d planted along the front walk bloomed in March, bright yellow against the last patches of melting snow. One morning, I stood on my porch with my coffee, watching the neighborhood wake up, and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this light.
Then the doorbell rang.
I wasn’t expecting anyone. I set down my cup and opened the door to a woman in her thirties, professional-looking, holding a clipboard.
“Mrs. Patterson?” she asked. “I’m Sarah Chen from Adult Protective Services. We received a report of potential elder self-neglect and wanted to do a wellness check.”
I almost laughed. Almost.
“Let me guess,” I said. “The report came from my daughter in Arizona.”
Sarah hesitated, and that told me everything. “I’m not at liberty to say,” she said carefully, “but I do need to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”
“Come in,” I said. “I’ll make tea.”
We sat in my living room while she asked about my daily routine, my medications, my social connections, my ability to manage my finances. I answered every question clearly and completely, then I handed her a folder.
“This,” I said, “is documentation of the fraud my daughter committed against me.”
Sarah opened it and flipped through: bank statements showing unauthorized transfers, a copy of the legal authority form Karen had tricked me into signing, a recording Tyler made of her admitting the plan, and a letter from my lawyer confirming I had revoked all authority she previously held.
Her expression shifted from professional neutrality to something like respect.
“Mrs. Patterson,” she said quietly, “this is very thorough.”
“I was an accountant for twenty-three years,” I said. “I know how to keep records.”
She closed the folder. “I don’t see any evidence of self-neglect here,” she said. “In fact, I’d say you’re managing remarkably well.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
She stood to leave, then paused at the door. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’ve seen a lot of cases like this. Adult children trying to take control of their parents’ assets. It rarely works out when the parent is as sharp as you are.”
“Thank you, Sarah,” I said.
“Take care of yourself, Mrs. Patterson.”
I watched her drive away, then went back inside and finished my tea.
Summer arrived hot and green. Tyler graduated with honors and got a job offer in Boston. He came to visit one last time before he moved, bringing his girlfriend Emma—kind, funny, and looking at him the way Harold used to look at me. We had dinner on the back patio, fireflies blinking in the garden, jasmine drifting through the warm air.
“I got something for you,” I told Tyler, handing him an envelope.
He opened it slowly, read the first page, and his eyes went wide.
“Grandma,” he whispered, voice breaking. “This is… this is the house.”
“The deed is in your name now,” I said. “The trust covers maintenance and taxes for the next twenty years. It’s yours whenever you’re ready.”
He set down the papers and hugged me so tight I could barely breathe. “I don’t know what to say,” he choked out.
“Say you’ll take care of it,” I said. “Say you’ll bring your kids here someday. Say you’ll remember this was our home, and it was built on love—not schemes.”
“I promise,” he whispered.
After they left, I sat alone in the garden, listening to crickets and the distant hum of the highway. The stars were thick and bright the way they only get in summer. I thought about Karen and wondered if she was happy in Arizona, or if she was still angry, still scheming, still searching for an angle.
It didn’t matter anymore. She’d made her choices. I’d made mine. And the life I had now—quiet as it was—finally belonged to me.
I was sixty-nine years old. My husband was gone. My daughter had betrayed me. But I had a grandson who loved me, a home that was paid for, friends who called just to chat, and a clarity I hadn’t felt since I was young and believed I could handle anything the world threw at me.
Turns out I still could.
The next morning, I woke up early before the sun had fully risen. I made coffee, fed the birds, and sat on the porch watching the light creep across the lawn. I didn’t feel old. I didn’t feel fragile.
I felt free.
And after everything, that was the only victory that mattered.
I never heard from Karen again—at least not directly. About a year later, Tyler mentioned she’d sent him a birthday card with a check inside. He tore it up without cashing it.
“She’s trying to buy her way back in,” he said.
“That’s your choice to make,” I told him. “I’m just proud of who you’ve become.”
And I meant it more than I could say. He was nothing like his mother. He had Harold’s steadiness, my stubbornness, and something all his own—a quiet integrity that couldn’t be taught or bought.
On my seventieth birthday, Tyler and Emma threw me a party. Nothing big—just a few friends from the library, my neighbor Walter, Daniel the lawyer and his wife. We had cake in the backyard. Someone brought champagne. Emma gave a toast that made me cry. And Tyler surprised me with a framed photo of Harold and me from our wedding day, restored and colorized.
“Found it in the attic last month,” he said. “Thought you’d want it somewhere you could see it.”
I hung it in the living room above the fireplace where the light caught it every morning.
That night, after everyone had gone home and the house was quiet again, I stood in front of that photo and talked to Harold the way I used to when he was alive.
“I did it,” I told him. “I kept the house. I kept myself. I didn’t let them take what we built.”
In my head, I could almost hear his voice—low, warm. I never doubted you for a second.
I smiled, turned off the lights, and went to bed.
Outside, the summer wind rustled through the oak tree, carrying the scent of jasmine and fresh-cut grass. The world kept turning the way it always does. But inside my house—inside my life—everything was finally still. Not empty still.
Peaceful still.
The kind of stillness that only comes when you fought for something and won.
I was seventy years old. I had outlived my husband, outmaneuvered my daughter, and outlasted every assumption anyone had ever made about what a woman my age could handle.
And I wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.
Tomorrow I’d wake up early, make my coffee, feed the birds, maybe start a new book, or sign up for that pottery class I’d been eyeing. The days stretched out ahead of me, full of possibility, and I intended to fill every single one.
That winter, I got a letter with no return address, postmarked from Arizona. I knew who it was from before I opened it. Inside was a single page, handwritten.
Mom, I know you probably won’t read this, but I need to say it anyway. I’m sorry. Not for what you think, because I still don’t believe I did anything wrong, but for how things turned out. I never wanted us to be strangers. I just wanted to help. I thought I was helping. Richard and I are getting divorced. He found someone else. I’m alone now. And I keep thinking about all the things I should have done differently. I’m not asking for money or forgiveness. I just wanted you to know that I think about you, that I miss you, even if you don’t miss me. —Karen
I read it twice. Then I folded it neatly, put it back in the envelope, and placed it in my filing cabinet with all the other records: the statements, the revoked authority documents, the recording transcript.
Not because I wanted to keep her words, but because I wanted a reminder of what had happened and why I’d made the choices I made.
I didn’t write back. I didn’t call.
Some doors, once closed, need to stay closed—not out of anger, not out of spite, just out of wisdom.
Tyler called that evening the way he always did on Sundays.
“How are you, Grandma?” he asked.
“I’m good,” I said.
And for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t just something I said. It was true.
The next morning, I woke up before dawn, made my coffee, and watched the sunrise paint the snow in shades of pink and gold. The oak tree was bare now, its branches reaching toward the pale winter sky like arms lifted in surrender—or maybe celebration. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
I was seventy-one years old. I had a house full of memories, a grandson who called every week, a life that was small and quiet and completely my own.
And I realized that was everything.
Not the money. Not the property. Not the legal victories or the documented proof.
Just this—this morning, this life I’d fought to keep.
I finished my coffee, washed the cup, and set it in the rack to dry. Then I put on my coat, stepped outside into the cold, bright morning, and started walking.
No destination. No deadline.
Just me and the world, the way it should be.