I am much too old for these late-night musings, but the memory, it just comes unbidden sometimes, and it’s a difficult thing to just dismiss once it has taken root, especially when the quiet of the house allows it such free reign. I remember my young wife, and her studio apartment, which was really nothing more than a single room with a partition for the bed, and how she had worked so hard to make it a home, despite the cramped quarters and the distinct lack of privacy, and it was her sanctuary, a place of her own after years of feeling somewhat adrift. I had promised her that space, that comfort, and I had seen the joy she found in arranging her small collection of books, and the little ceramic bird she kept on the windowsill, and how she would light a candle in the evenings to chase away the city’s harsh glow. But then her parents, they were always such a force, a very specific type of domestic aggression, I’ve come to understand it now as a kind of emotional siege warfare, and they would telegraph their displeasure from miles away, subtle hints at first, then escalating to overt declarations of their perceived needs, and it always felt like a threat, an ultimatum delivered with a smile, a kind of psychological warfare I had not been trained for. I remember the call, and the tone in her mother’s voice, a certain expectation that bordered on demand, and her father’s booming laughter in the background, a sound that always grated on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard, and I could feel the tension radiating from my wife, a palpable fear of disappointing them, of inviting their judgment. And I, being a young man, still somewhat naive to the intricacies of family dynamics and the subtle power plays that underpin them, felt this immense pressure to “keep the peace,” a concept so familiar from my service, but utterly misapplied in this civilian context, and I just buckled, I suppose you’d say, and agreed to let them stay. For a month. A month in that tiny apartment, and I saw the light drain from her eyes, and the way she would subtly flinch when her mother would rearrange her few treasured possessions, and the loud arguments her parents would have in the middle of the night, and my wife, she would just withdraw, a quiet despondency settling over her like a shroud, and I could see the resentment festering, not directed at her parents, but at me, for allowing it, for not protecting her and her small corner of the world, and I felt like a coward, a failure in my most fundamental duty as a husband. It wasn’t a matter of combat, or physical bravery, but a different kind of courage, one I simply did not possess at that age, and the memory still smarts, a wound that never quite heals, a regret that lingers in the quiet hours, and I wonder what might have been had I simply stood my ground, had I prioritized her peace over their incessant demands, and the cost of that capitulation, it was far greater than I ever could have imagined.