In that context, my son’s home was not an innocent slip of possessive language. It was a statement about whose house this was and who in it was the actual authority.
There was a third moment where I thought: say something. Say the true thing. The true thing is: this is not your son’s home exclusively, it is your son’s and my home jointly, and I would like the cumin back where I had it.
I said: it’s our home. Daniel’s and mine. Which is true. Which needed to be said. And Patricia said of course it is and the conversation moved on.
What the conversation moving on meant, in practice: the thing I had said was correct and on the record and had not changed anything. The cumin remained with the warm spices. Patricia continued to use the kitchen as her kitchen. Daniel continued to eat the soup and not address the thing we had all just heard.
I cleared the table. I did the math: six weeks of this, and I stood at the sink with the soup bowls thinking about what I was going to do about the weeks ahead.
What I did, for the next several weeks, was mostly continue to do what I had been doing: notice, register, absorb, occasionally mention, and accept the insufficient response. This is the honest account of it. I did not mount an immediate and effective campaign. I adapted in the way of someone who has learned, over many years of softening disagreements, to adapt.