I still count the locks even in houses that are not mine

Dear Delyara, I grew up in a house where my father sometimes came home violent. My mother taught us to check the front lock, kitchen window, back door, and bedroom latch in that order. She called it “making the house quiet.” I am forty-six now, and my father has been dead twelve years. I still count locks everywhere. Hotels. Friends’ houses. Holiday rentals. If I do not know how many exits there are, I cannot sleep. My wife understands some of it but not all. Last weekend, we stayed with her sister, and I got up three times to check a back door that was already locked. Her sister joked that I should work in security. Everyone laughed. I laughed too. What else was I supposed to do? I have never explained that at nine years old I believed checking correctly could determine whether my mother was hurt that night. Rationally, I know locks do not control other people’s violence. My hands learned the lesson before reason existed. Even now, when I hear the click of the final lock, one part of me is still a child thinking, Good. Maybe tonight we did it right.