End of the month. The Mrs. is at the kitchen table with the banking app open. The number on the screen sets what kind of week we get. Thinner this month. So the small stuff quietly moves to next month. Nobody asks it to. I tell her two invoices are coming. They clear all of it inside a fortnight. She nods and goes on with the sums.
She runs the house on what's cleared. Not what's promised, not what I know is coming. What's in the account tonight. I've explained the pipeline more times than either of us can stand. She takes it in, then budgets off the balance like I never spoke. I've called that the gap between us. She accepts it, she just doesn't get it. As if she's the one missing something.
Here's what surfaced tonight. I'd rather it hadn't. I know the money she trusts. I've had it. When I consulted, a hefty amount hit the account every month. Steady mattered more than hefty. You can budget a life on steady. I left it to build something of my own. Once it was built, I let myself rest. It worked. The money looked handled. Ten years it took. It died with my back turned.
She's still at the table. Only what cleared counts tonight. Whatever I know is coming, she leaves out of the sum. She'll sleep once it works out. I keep a number in front of me that never quite arrives. A floor to stay above. I call it focus. I have not let anything feel handled since.
Maybe she is the steady I keep leaving. She's turning off the kitchen light. I said I'd come up.
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
— Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, II (quoting Epicurus)