You ever just watch someone and realize they’re building a whole new life around the thing they’re trying to avoid? Like, you see it happening in slow motion, and you know what they’re doing, and they know what they’re doing, but no one says anything. I mean, I don't even — whatever. My dad, he retired last year, right? And he used to just chill, read the paper, whatever. But now? He’s in his workshop for like twelve hours a day. Twelve. Hours. He’s building birdhouses. Little ones, big ones, fancy ones with multiple levels. Our yard looks like a bird subdivision. And you know why. We all know why. It’s because he can’t stand being in the kitchen. Not when my mom is in there. It’s not like they’re fighting, not yelling or anything. It’s just… quiet. Too quiet. My mom, she just sits there. She used to be so busy, always doing something, but now she just… sits. And he can’t take it. He can’t sit there with her in the quiet. So he builds birdhouses. A whole damn village of them. And sometimes you just wonder if that’s what we all do, you know? We build these elaborate, intricate, completely unnecessary things to avoid the silence, to avoid the person sitting in the quiet. To avoid ourselves, even. And then you realize that maybe you’re doing it too. Maybe all this time I've spent trying to be this perfect parent, this perfect partner, this perfect *person* — it’s just my own birdhouse. It’s my way of not sitting in the quiet with what I actually want, with who I actually am. Because who I actually am... I don't even know. And that’s a terrifying thing to admit when everyone expects you to have it all figured out, especially when you’re a parent, like, you're supposed to be the grown-up. But sometimes you just feel like you’re building your own little wooden structures to keep everything else out. And you just keep building and building and building. Forever, probably.