“I’m not good at being a teenager,” she cried into her pillow.
I sat on the edge of her mattress and stated the obvious. “Sweetheart, you’re not a teenager yet. You’ve got a year and a few months to go.”
She mumbled something incoherent that I had to ask her to repeat twice.
Finally, she sat up, head bent, wringing her hands together. “I’ll be twelve this summer.”
“Yes, but?—”
“Nora will be thirteen soon. Like, in November, and Zoe’s birthday is in December. I’m the youngest one and I never cared until like…now.” Ivy frowned as she twisted toward me. “Everyone is wearing makeup, and Nora wears her mom’s jewelry, and she can even fit in her cool shoes too. She’s my best friend, but sometimes I feel I don’t fit in anymore. Not every day, but…today…”
“Was one of those days?” I guessed.
She nodded miserably. “I put eye shadow on in the bathroom at school. Zoe told me I overdid it and…I saw Derek and stupid Cole Jerkman looking at me and laughing, and I didn’t have time to wash it off. I just…I liked it better when we were all reading Calaria Cartwright mysteries.”
Me too.
This was a tough one for me. My girl wasn’t a teenager, but she was on the cusp of change and aware that her friendshad beat her to it. Everything in me wanted to shield her from unkind words and growing pains, but I had a feeling that was simply part of becoming a young adult.
“What did your mom say? I’m assuming you told her too.”
Ivy shook her head. “No, she’s…busy. And she doesn’t say anything about makeup if I only use a little and I don’t?—”
A clatter of footsteps jolted our attention to the hallway.
“Cooper!”
“It’s only a little cut,” Chase insisted in a calmer tone. “We have Band-Aids in the bathroom.”
“Okay, okay. Right. Never mind. We got this,” Silas called out.
Ivy and I shared a wide-eyed yikes expression, but before she could run interference with her brother, I stopped Ivy with a light tug on her wrist.
“Hey. Be you, Ive. I know you think you have to keep up with the crowd, but you’re perfect just the way you are. Utterly perfect. Just be you. And if you want to talk…I’m here. Always.”
She grinned and launched herself into my arms. “Love you, Dad.”
My heart clenched in my chest. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”
She stepped aside, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “We better see what happened.”
“Good idea.”
Ivy didn’t budge from the doorway, though. She gave me a shy sideways glance. “It’s not that I don’t want to wear makeup…I kind of do. A little, anyway. I just don’t know how to do it right.”
Silas rushed out of the bathroom just then, wide-eyed and harried. “Yo, I’ll teach you how to do makeup later. I got a more immediate problem. Chase tripped on a rock and ate some gravel and theToy StoryBand-Aids in the medicine cabinet wouldn’t fit around my big toe. Help!”
I bolted down the hall and was relieved to find that the cut was more of a surface wound than a real issue. I took over nursing duties while Ivy and Silas headed downstairs to start dinner. She was adamant that he should join us.
I overheard his pushback—something about not wanting to get in the way of our family time and Ivy’s response that we all liked him, even Dad, and we had plenty of food to share, so he might as well stay.
He did.
And I didn’t have it in me to pretend I wanted or needed distance. The opposite was true. On a day when I was overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility to my job and my kids, Silas was a breath of fresh air I craved.
I didn’t have to stress about the financing for the Mill Depot tonight. And second-guessing my parenting skills seemed silly because here they were, laughing like a couple of loons at Silas’s embellished retelling of a swooping crow that had chased him out of the forest during his morning run.
Silas had his own worries, but he didn’t bring them to the table. So that night, neither did I.
