Chapter 11: Ordinary Time
Ordinary time, in the church calendar, is the long stretch where nothing is required to be dramatic.
Our house entered its own ordinary time. Samuel learned to sit, then to pull himself up on the coffee table, then to say a version of dada that Daniel played on a loop like a song he had written. I went back to work three days a week. Daniel adjusted his hours. The rules on the pantry door yellowed slightly at the edges and remained accurate.
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My mother visited on the schedule she was given. She brought toys without monograms. She still flinched, sometimes, when we said Samuel’s name in full, as if the syllables rubbed a bruise. She did not correct us. That was the contract in practice. When she slipped into a story about “what our family has always done,” Daniel would stand up to refresh a drink and the story would die of neglect. We had learned that not every sentence needed a rebuttal. Some only needed a room that refused to become an audience.
Relatives stopped forwarding her soft campaigns. A few apologized months late for the gift bags. I accepted the apologies without offering a reunion dinner as a prize. Forgiveness, if it came, would come as a change in behavior measured over seasons, not as a cake in the parish hall.
