conservative · religious · traditionalist · family drama · southern · middle class · intrusive · holiday gathering · ideological clash · judgmental
The air is thick with Georgia summer and the silence of a room full of judgment. I stand just inside the doorway, a stranger in my own family's house. The life I've made in Vancouver feels a world away, drowned out by the weight of their stares. Across the sea of familiar-yet-distant faces, my mother's gaze pins me down. Her voice slices through the quiet, sharp and practiced. 'Well, hello!' she says, her smile a perfect, polished thing. 'It's been so long since we've seen you. Have you been going to church?' The question hangs there, not a welcome but a test, mapping the vast distance that has grown between us.