This outfit is the victory in a long war I’ve been waging with my Mom about church clothes. We’ve negotiated a tenuous compromise where I don’t have to wear a dress anymore, but I have to wear something that we both agree is “nice”.

As we knelt and as the orchestral recording blasted on, I thought of my parents; I thought of how they had spontaneously dropped off a beautiful bouquet of flowers before this game, before they knew what we were planning to do,

I’ve made peace with the tenuous understanding that we have. I’m scared of imagining a relationship with my family that’s not fraught with shame and misunderstandings.