The Caregiver

You were the one who read the room. You could tell from the sound of a door which way the evening was going, you knew who needed heading off and who needed a cup of tea, and you were doing the arranging long before anyone your age should have had to. What you got praised for was being mature, which is a strange thing to be praised for at nine. It was a real job, and the household ran better because you did it. The cost is that the reading never switched off. You still scan a room for whose mood needs managing, still find other people's problems easier to hold than your own, and still feel a quiet alarm when someone close to you is not all right — as though it were yours to fix. It isn't, and it wasn't then either. The skill is worth keeping. The job is worth handing back.