Martha and I sat in Adirondack chairs in the evenings and talked about things we had not said aloud in years. We talked about our mother’s sweet potato pie and the time we all got lice at Bible camp.
No one touched Arthur’s photograph. No one made me feel like I had to explain why that house mattered more than square footage and resale potential.
The second summer, things shifted. It did not happen dramatically, but rather as a series of small conveniences and assumptions.
Paul started making suggestions. He said the dock should be extended and the fire pit ought to have a gas line instead of wood because wood smoke was “a lot.”
He told me the guest room upstairs would function better as a home office since he worked remotely now. He even said the porch furniture would look better if we replaced my heavy wooden rockers with something more “modern and clean.”
Bridget echoed him the way mirrors echo faces. She did not contribute anything of her own, but just returned what he had already said.
At first, I thought she was just tired. Motherhood will flatten a woman in ways people treat like personality changes.