The Radio Played in the Kitchen and Nobody Was Really Listening

Dear Delyara, It was just background noise, some presenter talking too brightly about something forgettable while I chopped onions, one child searched for a charger, another asked if we had glue sticks, and my husband came in with a question about tomorrow. The radio kept talking as if we were all living one clean scene together. We weren’t. We were each in our own private weather, sharing one room. That thought hit me quite hard. Because family life can look so together from outside — one room, one meal, one soundtrack, one evening — while actually being made of five different inner worlds, all rubbing against each other in practical ways without necessarily arriving emotionally in the same place at all. I turned the volume down eventually. Not because it was too loud. Because it felt too false.