I counted the coins in my purse before going into the bakery

Dear Delyara, I had promised my son I’d get him a small treat after school, and I stood outside the bakery checking twice before I walked in. It wasn’t a dramatic amount of money. That’s what hurt. The older I get, the more I realise how many humiliations in adult life come in very small ordinary forms. Not disaster. Just checking. Just calculating. Just making sure you can keep a promise for something tiny without feeling the ground shift underneath the week. I bought the pastry. He was happy. I smiled like any mother would. Inside, I was thinking how exhausting it is to make normal life look normal when it has become such an effort to keep it that way.