He can be careless with a wife and she will leave.

But he can be as careless as he likes with his mother, spill her, waste her, take her utterly for granted, and she will still be there in the morning, still loving him, still ready to catch him.

Most sons trade on this their whole lives and are never punished for it, because most mothers never do present the bill, and so the son goes to his own grave never once having learned that the love was not, in fact, free.

I do not blame Steven, wholly, for assuming what nearly every son assumes.