I started typing this in my home office at a reasonable 10:30AM and left the window open while I do other things all day. It's just me in the apartment, because Ray is in the office and Harmon is at the school, grading the last finals and essays and attending some year-end meetings that have to be done in person. Then, just like for the past week, he'll be driving up to the Trading Post Inn, except that he won't be driving back tomorrow morning, but just hanging around until he's no longer Penelope Lincoln Lee and I've got the chance to be myself again.
There was a time I would have envied the year he's got in front of him; the luggage and letter that was there when he arrived is a stud who looks like he's spent a good chunk of his 18 years in the gym, accepted to a good college, nobody in particular to fool. Probably got a huge dick, because some folks just have good luck fall into their laps.
Which admittedly includes me; the last few years have been a bit tougher than expected, with Ray starting his own firm and having to get a full-time job because "midlist author" isn't quite the stable income it used to be, especially when you've got a kid with often-expensive hobbies. Those are the most first-world of first-world problems, really (note to self: have not heard kids say "first-world problems" in the time I've been embedded among them). I've been Penny long enough to have developed a certain world-view that it's maybe useful to have upended.
Not that I'm ever going to admit that the months of worry are a fair tradeoff for understanding Millie better. Yes, one of the lasting lessons I've learned as a parent is that worry is what you spend to have a child you can be proud of; I've worried every time Millie hurt herself playing sports or spent the night at a friend's place or went to camp, and, boy, that time I watched her ride a bike out of my sight gave her her first T pass at 11 were crazy, but I do think she'll be a braver, more independent woman for it, and she got through an Inn experience that I suspect might have broken me had I visited the Inn at 13 and wound up a grown woman apart from my parents, mixed bag as they were - I might have been so lost that I might not have been able to conceive going back and being myself again, but Millie is still herself underneath the silly facial hair, and I'm grateful.
And, for all that this started with me expressing private frustration with relating to her because her genes weren't the ones that made me who I was, regardless of what I became later, I know for a fact that she is my daughter in all the ways that matter. My instincts steered me well as her, and nobody ever told me I was acting weird. Plus, she apparently took all the writing classes she could fit into Griff's schedule at school, not quite enough that he's going to come back to find he's minoring in journalism, but it shows that a lot of what drives both me and Ray is in there - just like the way she ran off to find the Inn, she wants to know things and communicate it and make them right, which is a big part of what drove me into writing and him into law.
Maybe this time will fade for her, or maybe she'll have a leg up on dealing with men and other adults as she grows older. I kind of hope it's the first, but no kid comes out of something life-changing, literally or figuratively, unchanged. She looks like she's doing well, but she deserves to be a kid and a teenager.
Speaking of which, today happens to be her/mine/our 14th birthday. We're going to eat some garbage and watch the new Supergirl movie tonight, and then spend the weekend with her humiliating me at tennis and whatever other sports we can get to while she's got a 21-year-old male physique. With any luck, we'll get a message from Harmon tomorrow about the Inn doing its thing, and we can look forward to changing back and being able to talk about everything.
-Arthur/Penny/Millie
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