"Who is the mamma in the house?"

With each housecleaning, minor and sometimes major, rearrangements take place which, at first, invariably confuse me. If I try weakly to ask why or offer an alternative which at the time seems to me to be more practical, I am usually cut short with a "who is the mamma in the house?" which makes me abide and pay no further attention. Only once in a great while it has happened in the past, not in this but in another house or two, that I came home at night and walked into our bedroom to take off rain-soaked clothes before presenting myself only to find out that where the bed used to stand there was a desk, and my clothes cabinet had moved without telling me to another room. I used to be frightened by such unforeseen and surprising moves. But I found out that such changes take place in complete order and no more than a question is necessary to get me the full information as to where my house robe or my stockings or tax receipts will be kept from now on.
     --From her husband Egon's journal, Christmas Day 1947