OPENED THE DOOR AFTER A LONG DAY AT WORK – AND FOUND SIX OF MY HUSBAND’S RELATIVES SETTLED IN COMFORTABLY, WAITING FOR DINNER. I SMILED POLITELY, WALKED TO THE BEDROOM AND CLOSED THE DOOR BEHIND ME. I HAD NO INTENTION OF COOKING – I’D ALREADY EATEN ON THE WAY HOME…

“Thank you for the notice,” I said. “Are they staying here?”

“Just the weekend,” he said. “They don’t want to be any trouble.”

And I thought that phrase.

That specific phrase.

They don’t want to be any trouble.

The phrase that is always deployed by people in the process of being tremendous trouble.

I said, “Marcus, I’d like us to talk about this. Actually talk about it. Not just the parents next weekend, the whole pattern. I think we need a real conversation about how we handle family visits.”

He looked at me with the expression of a man who had been hoping for a different sentence.

“Okay,” he said without warmth.

We tried.

I want to give that two hours its due.

We sat at the kitchen table and I said what I’d been holding for months.

Specifically.

Without accusation.

In the measured cadences of a woman who had been trained professionally to communicate about hard things.

I said that I loved his family.

That I valued our connection to them.

And that I needed our home to be a place I could count on coming home to.

Not a venue that might contain anything on any evening.

I said that I wasn’t asking him to cut anyone off or change who his family was.

I was asking for consultation.

For advance notice.

For the basic courtesy of being treated as a co-owner of the space we shared.

He listened.

He nodded in some places.

He said he understood.

He said he’d do better.

He reached across the table and took my hand.

And I looked at his hand over mine and tried to determine whether I believed him.