“This year, we’re only having dinner with my wife’s family,” my son told me. I simply replied, “perfect.”

I almost laughed.

Instead I asked, “And I am what? A threat to the silverware?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You said the dinner is for your wife’s family. I am your family.”

“Mom.”

His voice softened, but not with warmth. It was the tone used to manage someone inconvenient.

“Couldn’t you have dinner with a friend? Or stay home, make something you like, watch a movie? We’ll come by another day.”

For a moment, only the refrigerator hummed.

My son was forty-two. I had cared for him through childhood illnesses, school, college applications, unemployment, and adulthood. I had babysat Gabriel so he and Carla could travel and spent five years pretending not to notice the ways his wife made it clear I embarrassed her.