A small story:

"How's the Kid doing?" a friend asked.

I don't know if you're aware of this but I, Quinn Cummings, am not a rigorous yet inclusive liberal-arts college, nor am I her myriad friends. Her father is not parties on the weekends, or arcane in-jokes with the Doodles.

In short, we are living with a very tall depressed person. I add the tall part because wherever I go, there's a limb, and that limb is moping.

I am desperate to fix this at least in part because when Kid is sad her sad crawls into my head and mates with my sad.

Then I have to have my head tented for sad.

I'm also certain this is a place to learn. Sure, it's not School Of Age and Quad but there are myriad lessons to learn right now, if you look.

Kid is not so much interested in looking.

"Find your inner equilibrium!" I exhort.

A downcast shin expands into the dining room.

I try, as best as I can, to empathize and not appear overly panicked that her sad is making seductive eyes at my sad. I try to model the behavior of someone who would, honestly, also very much like to see her at school but in the meanwhile, look!

Streaming exercise!

She sighs.

I can only hope she's learning something which will benefit her later, because that's how it worked for me.

When I was nine, my father died. With two parents working, we'd been upper-middle class; one income and it was a little more complicated.

My parents owned a spectacular house in the Hollywood Hills, two lots, views of the city, an ENTOURAGE episode of a house. But she had no money because my father had failed to write a will. The spring after he died, his estate still in probate, the roof developed leaks.

It needed to be retiled.

Jan got estimate after estimate; even the most modest was way out of our budget. One Saturday morning, she placed a ladder against the side of the house.

"We," she said firmly, "Are going to do this ourselves."

I blinked.

On the back side of the house, where we were, the house was only a story high but the other side of the roof, the majority of it, dropped five stories to the lower street.

It's possible I mentioned this.

"Well," she said, "Then I better not fall."

For the entire summer, she continued her full-time job, she raised her daughter (I was exhausting); I assume that in private moments, she allowed herself to grieve.

But every Saturday morning, she was back up on the roof, me at the bottom of the ladder, handing her tiles.

My mother was a complicated person and possibly not that great of a mother but I will give her this; she was courageous and she was tough. I remember that summer, on average, once a month. I remember it when confronting a large task, or something beyond my pay grade.

"Shut up and get up the ladder," I tell myself.

I want to save the Kid pain. I want her to not get lost in the cul-de-sacs my sadness has occasionally trapped me in for years. But maybe I can't do that.

Maybe I should just get on the ladder and fix my own damn roof.

And now, THE AD! If you like these Small Stories, can I coax you into helping to support them? I promise to hand you a tile and the bucket of tar. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4846197