We had a hard conversation in December, nothing to do with Patricia, about something that had been bothering me about our finances and that I had been avoiding raising because I didn’t want it to become a bigger conversation. I raised it. Daniel listened and had a response that wasn’t defensive. We worked it out in an hour. I noted this privately, because noting progress is also a skill.
The thing I want to say about the four months of Patricia’s stay is not that everything was clear from the beginning and I just needed to be braver about saying it. It wasn’t clear. I had a genuine invitation to a genuine guest that became something I hadn’t agreed to, and the process of understanding the difference between those two things took time and required Lena asking a question at dinner and a walk in October and a counselor asking what I was afraid of.
The guest remark — my son’s home — was the moment I stopped being able to pretend the situation was fine. Not the moment I changed anything, but the moment pretending became impossible. Sometimes that’s what it takes: a sentence so specifically wrong that it cuts through the habit of accommodation.
I live in my house. I have always lived in my house. What I have now, that I didn’t fully have before, is the practice of living in it clearly.
The cumin is in the right place. The door means what a closed door should mean. My husband and I are working on the rest.