I found a homework sheet under the dining table after everyone had gone to bed

Dear Delyara, It was folded in half and slightly marked from someone’s shoe. I recognised the worksheet immediately because I had asked twice about homework after dinner and been told, in that casual tired voice children use, that everything was already done. I stood there in the quiet house holding the paper and felt that familiar mixture of love, frustration, and resignation that motherhood seems to produce in endless small doses. Not because of the worksheet itself. Because of what it represented. One more small thing that had quietly become mine without ceremony. One more piece of tomorrow’s stress already waiting for me in tonight. I put it by the kettle so I would see it in the morning. Then I switched the kitchen light off and felt the room go silent in a way I wish my mind could.