Behind all those placid expressions, her eyes betray me to the truth. They are puffy in their corners, bloodshot, and spent. Each vessel webs together like a memoir of our war before dinner. How she snapped a blanket at her brother, stomped the hardwood before me, and eventually collided with her own humanity by crying on her bed. Well, wailing the injustices of the world.

“Come sit by me,” I say gently across the table. Spelling homework, her nemesis, a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way she gives up trying, is splayed in front of her. She moves without a fight in an outfit I am surprised to like. This alone tells me she’s growing older. It wasn’t so long ago I was explaining the crime of her tube socks and capris, while now I find that I say, “I really like what you put together this morning,” as she walks a little peppier.

It’s as if I see her for the first time in years. But when I look, I see failure. In me.

My oldest daughter, the one who made me a mother, half-child and half-grown, the girl I’ve let down. Maybe because sometimes parenting is a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way I give up trying.

I pull her into me and wrap my arms until she relaxes. “My girl,” I say, turning her shoulders square to mine. “I forget. You somehow get the most expectations, the most responsibility, I guess because you were here first. I forget  you are still my girl.”

Her mouth turns slightly, a smile that hesitates from the lessons of pain cautiously recalling that some things may be too good to be true. I have taught her that her innocent longings might be met with angry, worn out replies like, “Can you please, just, pick up!” That her need for security, her most basic questions of acceptance and worthiness of love could be answered by tense bursts of, “How many times have I told you to brush. Your. TEETH…return your library book…bring your homework?”
That mistakes are an opportunity for me to be exasperated instead of the part of life that teaches us.

She nods at what I’m saying and then a nervous giggle escapes through those adult teeth who are waiting to fit her mouth. My knuckles relax onto my temple and I settle into not hurrying anything. She writes with 4th grade sloppiness I find beautiful just because it’s hers.

We sit in the shadow of our conflicts, meeting at the intersection of mistakes and apologies, and I think that maybe this is the gift I have to offer. My parenting at its best, only when I’ve been at my worst. That like Spelling homework, life is full of disappointment as much as joy and promises pain as much as reward but also, failure as a way to something rich and real.