We’ve been celebrating the kid’s birthday for the past week. I’m now the parent of a fifteen-year-old.

Late in the year that I was fifteen, I remember thinking constantly and ecstatically, Fifteen is the best year of my life! Later, thinking rather constantly, No, it was not.

My partner and I high-five at the birthday dinner table. We did it. We have kept this child alive and well for fifteen years. Parenting being the hardest thing we’ve ever done, are doing.

One day I went into a hospital and a few days later I rode out in the backseat of the car with a baby in a carseat next to me. Now the baby sends me a selfie of her face, and in front of her face, a dangling set of car keys she’s holding.

We’re in a Mercury retrograde. I felt compelled this week to look at a set of journals that begin in June 1993 and end sometime in 1994. I carried them from my office to the house. They sat for a couple days. On the kid’s birthday, I picked them up, and began transcribing.

my books are waiting to be read by you