A small story:

"I'm doing a load of jeans, want to add anything?"

"Thanks, I'll do laundry when I'm ready."

"Want to take the miso packets with you? They're flat and if you're tired, it's easy to eat."

"Thanks, but I'll get them there."

"Can I hel-"

"MATHer."

As Truman Capote noted, sagely if nasally, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."

I wanted a strong, self-reliant daughter, the person who isn't reckless but also doesn't look the other way when help is required.

One might say, I prayed for her.

She finished her school year. Two days later, she was packing to head back to her college town, to volunteer in the emergency room. Thanks to a friend whose husband is a surgeon, she had N95 masks for the plane and what could only be described as oddly dashing goggles.

I tore off Chlorox wipes and put them in a sealed bag for the planes and the airports. I thought about how the world is full of idiots and added a few dozen more. I considered Lori Laughlin, a hugely stupid woman - I have stories, she's also mean - who tried to crime for her kid.

The great thing about that child being at a school she had no business attending was how utterly and loudly ungrateful she was to be there. Let's just stipulate the entire family is, at least now, without laudable qualities.

Perhaps prison will change th-

(Falls over laughing)

It's weird, having an adult offspring. You want to make sure they're okay so you can sleep at least a few minutes at a time, but gliding their path is exactly what not to do. I know some people who had the road ahead of them denuded of rocks and ruts; they are very bad drivers.

Kid will, correctly, point out to me, to you, that she spent her senior year of high school in France, in a situation which turned out to be pretty terrible. When she had to go back after Christmas, not one of us was happy about this. That goodbye at the airport was awful.

At any given moment, two of us were certain she had to go back and one was in tears.

The horse had thrown her, and us.

She had to get back on it.

I do not wish the hollow feeling I had as I watched her departing figure on anyone. She's inches taller than I am.

She looked so small.

She prevailed.

She spent her first semester in college in Central America when Spanish is her weakest Romance language. She ended up helping a friend get her antidepressants on the last day before they headed into the rainforest, even though the girl lacked the required paperwork.

"Did you bribe the pharmacist?" I asked her the first time she told this story. She smiled serenely and said, "Latin Americans are a broadminded people."

She also learned some truly filthy things to shout at men inclined to lean out of cars and scream at tall American girls.

Again and again, she shows me she's resilient.

Again and again, I admire that resilience and try to keep her from needing so goddamn much of it.

"Stay here! Do nothing! Be safe!" I think as I watch her pack.

"No," she answers me in all ways.

She wants to write and direct horror films while also doing something medical. I generously offer the eyedropper's worth of juice I have to introduce her to people in both worlds. Like the laundry offer, she politely but firmly turns me down.

The last words I said to her before she went to France the first time - before we knew how ghastly it would be - was, "You got this." When it got terrible, I flashed back to that moment and could have cried; she didn't have this, because "This" was fucked up.

When she went back, I didn't say that because, honestly, none of us knew. I knew that at 16 I wouldn't have "Got this." For weeks, I lived on the French time zone, so she could text me whenever she needed a friendly voice.

Every day, she clung to what little good showed up.

Eventually, enough good accumulated so that it no longer could qualify as a total disaster. Had she stayed at the holidays - which was a totally reasonable, safe choice - she'd never have known what she was capable of accomplishing.

We had to trust her resources.

When she first talked about going to work in an ER, Consort and I said, in near sync, "You're going to be heading into a war zone."

"It's my world," she responded, "And it's my war."

We have to trust her resources.

Godspeed, Kid.

See you at Thanksgiving.