The Sound of Violation
The spoon hits the ceramic mug. Clink. Too aggressive. Not like Mom’s quiet, respectful stirring. I am in the dining room, sitting at the mahogany table we never use, pretending the glowing screen in front of me demands my attention. I am tracking the steps of a stranger in my mother’s kitchen-the sacred space, the locus of every Thanksgiving, every terrible birthday, every quiet Sunday morning.
I know, intellectually, this is insane. We spent three weeks interviewing, cross-referencing, verifying credentials. We needed help. Mom fell last month. It was 3 in the morning. She broke her hip and suddenly the cozy, familiar calculus of our lives shifted, becoming brutal and numerical. We needed someone to manage the afternoons, the medication, the slow, agonizing process of re-learning to stand.
Emotional Buffer Completion
99%
That tension-the near certainty mixed with total anxiety-is exactly what hiring care feels like.
The Price of Surveillance
The woman-Marie-is technically vetted. She is certified, bonded, insured. She passed the background checks that looked back 12 years. All the boxes are checked, yet the paper trail offers no comfort against the auditory evidence of that loud, judgmental clink. That sound tells me she doesn’t understand the fragility of the china. That sound tells me she is not us.
I spent $2,200 on new cameras just last week, which is exactly
