I said earlier that I want to be honest about those eighteen months, and I want to continue that honesty here.
I had moments of genuine anger that I expressed badly. One was at a family dinner in January, two weeks after the Christmas hallway conversation, when I was already holding more irritation than I had processed. Marian made a casual comment about Daniel’s long day at work and I said something sharp about how I had also had a long day, in a way that was designed to make a point rather than to contribute to a conversation, and it landed in an awkward silence that Daniel smoothed over with a pivot to a different topic.
After the dinner, in the car, he said: “I know you’re frustrated.”
“I’m not frustrated,” I said. “I’m angry. There’s a difference.”
“Okay. I know you’re angry.”
“Your mother just spent twenty minutes talking about your workday without once asking about mine.”
“Because she doesn’t know you have one.”
“She doesn’t know because you told her I don’t.”
“I know. I’m going to fix it.”
He did not fix it. Not that night, not in the weeks that followed. And I, for my part, did not push. I made sharp comments at dinners and then I let the conversation move on and I did not sit Daniel down and say: this stops now, either you correct it or I will.
I was waiting. I was hoping he would do it on his own. I was afraid — and I will say this clearly — that requiring it would create a confrontation that would show me something about Daniel I wasn’t ready to see.