The version who comes home from work and sometimes asks what I am working on, not as a performed interest but as a genuine one. Who remembers details about my projects from one conversation to the next. Who mentions, when it comes up in context, that his wife is an operations consultant and she is good at it.
These are not high bars. They are the bars that should have been cleared from the beginning. The reason they feel significant now is that they were absent for so long. Once they are consistently present, they will become ordinary, which is where I want them to be.
Ordinary is the goal. Not dramatic reconciliation, not a public gesture, not a formal apology delivered with witnesses. Ordinary daily behavior that reflects an accurate picture of who we both are.
We are getting there. Slowly and with effort and occasionally with friction, but getting there.
## A Conversation That Did Not Go the Way I Expected
In August, Daniel’s uncle Richard came to Columbus for a weekend visit. Richard is in his sixties, Daniel’s father’s older brother, and he was the one standing in the living room at Christmas when Daniel told him we were managing on his income. Richard is the person whose presence at that conversation I have held onto the longest, in the specific way you hold onto the moment when you heard the wrong thing said about you.
The weekend visit was not arranged around me. Daniel and Richard had plans that included some football watching and a visit to their aunt, who is in a care facility on the east side of the city. I was included in one dinner on Saturday evening.