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I Am My Daughter’s Anxiety
She is the best and worst of me.
I’m sitting across from my daughter who is not so cheerily working on hour number one of about five hours of homework. She is texting her classmates back and forth because she needs a little help and solace and they’re mostly done.
They’re done because they’re not the only freshman on the Junior Varsity Volleyball Team. They’re not the ONLY kid in the freshman IB honors program to also be an athlete. She is.
I am working on hour one of about five of my budget. I’m doing a horrible job because I have had a really bad day and my brain is racing and in 15 different places and I can’t sit still and all I really want to do is write.
We’re drinking tea and listening to the Beatles.
“Alex said the reading assignments ALONE take four hours! I’m screwed.”
She’s beautiful. She doesn’t know it and it will be a long while before she does. Tall and willowy and strong. I can’t stop staring at her. I made this. I sang her to sleep with Johnny Cash as she laid on my chest as a baby 15 years ago.
Her dyed red hair is pulled back in two French braids with ribbons on the ends in her school colors, purple and silver. It’s the first time I have seen her with ribbons…
