My daughter is 17 and currently meandering around Europe, enjoying a new found sense of freedom and of adventure. Her excitement as she increasingly appreciates life’s possibilities is almost palpable.

And who knows what these possibilities will materialise as…

I came across this poem in a recent issue of The New Yorker. I love its ambiguity and its realism, although I never felt that my daughter was ‘mine’, or that I held any ownership over her.

 

Fourteen

Marie Howe

 

She is still mine–for another year or so–

but she’s already looking past me

through the funeral-home door

to where the boys have gathered in their dark suits.