I heard my husband come home and needed one extra minute before joining the evening

Dear Delyara, I was upstairs folding washing when I heard the front door open. Shoes. Keys. His voice with the children. The fridge door. The familiar sound of family life expanding to include one more person again. Usually I go down straight away. This time I stayed still for one extra minute with a towel in my hands because I could feel that I wasn’t ready yet. Not ready to answer, decide, discuss, continue. I needed sixty more seconds of being no one’s emotional surface. I went down after that. No one noticed the delay. I did.