That was the genius of it, and the trap of it.

You cannot fight a compliment.

When Brenda told me I was better at soothing the baby, what was I supposed to say, no I’m not, let him do it badly?

When she brought Liam his favorite food because the poor boy was so tired, what was the objection, that he should be hungry?

Every unfair thing arrived wrapped in the language of praise and care and common sense, so that to push back against it was to reveal yourself as ungracious, competitive, unmotherly, a woman who begrudged her exhausted husband a plate of food.

She had built the whole system so that resisting it would always make me look worse than submitting to it.