Courtesy of the author
- I'm 28 and my dad asks me regularly if I'm all right with money.
- He asks because he knows I'm not fine after quitting my job to become a freelancer.
- I'm less financially stable as I creep 30 than when I was 21 and fresh out of college.
It has become a bleak ritual. I speak, first, to my mother, who tells me about her week and the deteriorating state of our aging relatives. She passes the phone to my father, and we, too, catch up and maybe chat about football. Then, inevitably, comes the lull in the conversation, the dead air on the line, the intake of breath before the question is posed.
"You all right for money?"