She was eleven now. She had lost a tooth last week and complained about the injustice of the tooth fairy’s exchange rate. She had joined a soccer team and was, by her own assessment, “not terrible.” She had a best friend named Lila who came over on Saturdays and they made elaborate bead bracelets on the living room floor while I pretended not to notice that they were also eating popsicles on the carpet. She was a child. She was being allowed, finally, to be one.
Some evenings, after she went to bed, I sat alone in the kitchen and thought about what she had done. Not with pride, though I was proud. Not with gratitude, though I was grateful. With something closer to sorrow, the particular sorrow of a mother who understands that her daughter’s bravery was produced by a failure of protection, that Harper had to become her own witness because the adults responsible for her had not managed to be adequate ones. She should not have needed to carry that.
