Because the goal was never to win a dramatic victory over my husband.

The goal was to arrive at exactly this: an ordinary morning, in an ordinary kitchen, in which two parents divide the day’s labor between them as a matter of course, without resentment, without one of them silently drowning, without anyone keeping score, because the score is even and stays even.

There is nothing cinematic about a man testing formula temperature on his wrist while his wife checks her calendar.

It is the most mundane scene imaginable.