I tried to stay in the practical. I tried to say: here’s what I can offer, here’s what I can’t, here are the alternatives, here’s what I need. I tried not to make it about the history, at least not in the room, at least not in the conversations that needed to produce outcomes. The history came out later — in the conversation with my father in December, in the exchange with my mother about the tape measure in January — and by then the practical issues had been resolved and the history could be discussed without it collapsing into the problem.
I think that sequencing was right. I think you resolve the practical before you discuss the pattern, because discussing the pattern when the practical is still urgent creates a situation where the conversation is simultaneously trying to produce an outcome and work through a grievance, and those two things pull in different directions.
## The Question of Gratitude
Somewhere in the middle of all of this — I think it was the week after the family meeting, when nothing had been resolved and the closing was still three weeks away and I was living with the ambient tension of not knowing how it was going to land — my mother said something that I’ve thought about a lot since.
We were on the phone and she was frustrated. Not yelling, not crying — just frustrated in the specific way of someone who feels they’re being asked to justify themselves for something that shouldn’t require justification.