My mother was bent down over her desk, checking and double-checking long columns of numbers. “Goddamnit,” she swore softly as I walked into her office, and she immediately started searching through the shuffled piles of papers on her desk.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t understand the answer.

“Just working on the Marinucci’s 1040- they’ve listed $5,000 as deductible, but I don’t understand where the hell they’re getting that number from,” she responded, flipping through some bank statements. She finally glanced up at me. “So what’s up?”

“I finished filing,” I told her, and she smiled appreciatively.

“Thanks so much, you’re such a big help,” she said. “Oh, we’re probably not going to get home until sevenish tonight,” she added. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine,” I sighed, watching her throw down the bank statement, looking irritated, and pick up another.

“We should go on vacation for a full month after tax season’s over,” I said jokingly, although secretly I wasn’t joking.

“I wish,” she sighed, shuffling through her papers again. “But we’re really behind- your father has a bunch of estates he needs to catch up on, and Debbie White’s been a pain in the ass lately. Even after April 15th, we’ll probably be working just as hard for a while.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, trying to sound disappointed. She asked me to take the mail out to the mailbox and I said “sure,” so I grabbed the pile of addressed and stamped envelopes off the receptionist’s desk and exited the office building towards the mailbox.

This is the legacy my parents have given me: always working hard, yet somehow never seeming to get ahead. My mother once addressed this legacy, when we were talking about colleges.

“Your father and I were always told to work hard,” she said, a distant look in her eyes. “Work hard, work hard. Nobody ever told us that going to a good college would make it easier to get a good job, or even what a good job was- it was always just to work hard.” She sighed and shook her head, and I knew she was tired of working hard, that she had been working hard for the past twenty years and hadn’t gotten anywhere. “That’s why we want you to go to a good college, so you can get a good job and won’t have to work like we do.” I nodded; I had witnessed their late nights at the office and the files brought home; I had lived through “tax season” and the stress that resulted for everyone, and me having to cook my little sister dinner and tuck her into bed for weeks while my parents stayed at the office and worked. I wanted to tell her that I could tell how much she didn’t like working so hard, how she didn’t like working as an accountant and an office manager and whatever else for my dad and that instead she wanted to open a coffee shop, and I was sorry she couldn’t because of my dad’s lack of staff and the high tuition costs , but I smiled and nodded and went back to working hard on my homework.