Friday Chronicles; Are You Sure?
This morning I sat at my desk, tea cooling beside the laptop, a meeting invite blinking on the screen. Before the first chime, I called Patricia into a meeting. Patricia is me, of course—the part of me that still flinches at conflict, the girl who learned early that quiet could keep the house from breaking. I ask her the same question every time: “Why are you doing this?” I grew up in a house where the air could shift in a heartbeat. My survival skill was simple: keep the peace. I became the easy child, the one who smoothed rough edges, the one who tried to offer my mother a small island of calm when the world around her refused to settle. Obedient. Tractable. I learned to silence my own needs for the greater good. Somewhere along the way I built myself a mantra: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I told my daughters about it recently—how those words kept me safe, sane, and together when the compound we lived in swirled with the good, the ugly, and t...
