The great trick of that kind of upbringing is not that it hurts you.

It is that it convinces you the hurt was normal, and installs the conviction so deep that you spend thirty years defending the very thing that damaged you.

For those thirty years, keeping the box closed was the single organizing principle of my relationship with her.

I called the closed box “having made my peace.” It was not peace.

It was a held breath.

And then she put her hand over a tray of cookies and used the voice on my daughter, and the box came open on its own.