But with Frank, it came.
In late 2018, when I was 28 and had just been promoted to lieutenant commander, Frank drove to the duty station where I was posted. He did not make the proposal theatrical. He said he wanted to build something with me and asked if I would.
I said yes.
My first call was to my father, who said, “Good.” He asked the right questions.
My second call, because I was raised to do the right thing and I have never stopped doing the right thing even when the right thing is uncomfortable, was to Helen Hansen in Greenwich, Connecticut, Frank’s mother.
She received the news with warmth that lasted the length of the phone call. I would spend the next seven years understanding what that warmth actually was: a performance with an expiration date, offered because the moment required it and withdrawn the instant the moment passed.
The first time I met Helen Hansen in person in the spring of 2017, I brought flowers. I offered my hand with a genuine smile because that is how I was raised, and because I believed—genuinely believed—that the woman who had raised the man I loved would be someone I could build a relationship with.