## The Inspection I Didn’t Authorize
About ten days after the family meeting, a Thursday afternoon when I was in my office on a call, my mother stopped by the house.
I had given her a key years ago, for the specific purpose of coming by if there was an emergency and I wasn’t available. She had used it twice in four years: once to water my plants when I was traveling, once to let a plumber in when I had a leak and had to be at work.
She used it that Thursday to come in, let herself through to the hallway, and open the door to my office to take measurements.
I found out about this because I came out of my call forty-five minutes later and found her in the hallway with a tape measure.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just getting an idea of the space,” she said. She had a small notebook. She had written down dimensions.
I stood there for a moment. “Mom,” I said. “I was working.”
“You had your door closed,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“I had my door closed because I was in a call,” I said. “In a professional meeting.”
“I know,” she said. “I just wanted to see what we were working with.”
“You don’t have permission to measure my rooms,” I said. I tried to say it without an accusatory tone, but I also didn’t try very hard, because the sentence needed to land and sometimes landing requires a little gravity. “I need you to not do that again.”