What doesn’t go on Instagram, Snapchat, or WhatsApp: My Bank statements, past due notices, quick glances exchanged conveying our shared concern.
Blue Cross Insurance bills, sleepless nights, tuition costs upcoming. E-mails bearing disappointing news of her condition, phone calls for hours trying to reconcile insurance details. Great heaving sighs.
The way sometimes my daughter Jenifer and I put our arms around each other when she is down and has a UC flare going. She is in pain, her weight is dropping and none of those expensive medications or infusions are working.
We just sit there and look at each other — hoping silently things would improve.
Sometimes she has her head in my lap as she is curled into a ball and I am running my fingers through her hair holding her close — my baby. Sometimes, I run out of my parenting skills and I head out for a drive so that I can come back with some unadorned optimism.
I am on the phone with her doctor who tells me her counts are way off the charts. I keep an even tone as I wrap up the conversation and sit down next to her.
“You ok Dadz?” She asks ,her face a borough of concern.
“Yeah. You ok?” I ask, understanding the futility of the question.
As I sit back down, I tell her about what the doctor just read.
When she hears it, Jenny reacts in a way only I would notice: the quick blink, a slight nod, but otherwise impassive, trying to give nothing away, but I see her eyes are already starting to flood up. I wish there was a way to take this upon myself and let her be the normal happy teenager that she could be.
It’s early in the morning — the lunch is still cooking on the stove and we are bleary-eyed as we bury our heads in each other’s shoulders.
It’s going to be okay.
A shared vocabulary — like a soundtrack to our lives — so familiar that we hardly even notice which of us is speaking.
Eighteen years.
