He Took the Kids Out and Left Me the House

Dear Delyara, Not for a long time. Not for a spa day. Just two hours. But when the front door closed behind them and the silence settled through the rooms, I felt my body react like somebody had put down a weight I had forgotten I was wearing. I stood in the kitchen and actually didn’t know what to do first because I’m so used to rest arriving in fragments, with interruptions built into it. So I made tea. Then I sat at the table and cried. Not because I was sad. Because I realized how long it had been since I had heard the house without myself already being required inside it. When they came back, I hugged him too hard and said thank you too many times. He shrugged like it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing. It felt like oxygen.