JOI’s father’s garage monologue (pp. 163–164)
Mother came to so many it ceased to mean anything that she came. She became part of the environment.
Context
The maternal support that curdles, by sheer constancy, into invisibility — and it is the exact figure the book will later pin on Avril. The grandfather's own mother "never missed a competitive match," came to so many that her coming "ceased to mean anything," until "she became part of the environment." Support this total stops registering as support; the ever-present mother becomes weather, furniture, a condition rather than a choice. It is the same paradox that turns Avril's "total unconditional support" into something closer to surveillance in Hal's dream (023) and her "conspicuously announced unconditional love" into pressure (048): love that never lapses becomes love that can't be felt as love. The pattern is generations deep. The mothers in this family attend everything and thereby dissolve into the background of everything, present to the point of erasure.