Don’t worry about the price, she would tell the group.

Our family’s got a walking credit card.

And everyone would look at me, and everyone would laugh, warmly, affectionately, the way you laugh at a thing that is both funny and true and has been said many times before.

I used to repeat it myself, in fact, to new acquaintances, as though it were a charming quirk of my marriage rather than the quiet announcement of my function in it, and the ease with which I recited my own caption is something I have had to forgive myself for slowly.

I used to laugh too.