I took Lily to her LGBTQIA support group for kids with mental and behavioral issues, dropped her in the lobby with her phone, then drove to Bellevue for a quiet drink. I sat at the bar with a shrimp cocktail, and that song came on I’ve been listening to in the car, one from the ’80s that seems to be following me around. And I let it take me out of my circumstance, to another time.

On Friday, we celebrated her birthday in Issaquah at the Italian restaurant we’ve been to so many times, for birthdays and random days we felt like going out. And then we watched Bohemian Rhapsody, and all weekend I had Queen songs in my head.

We went to the mall in Bellevue twice, and ran up the credit card on clothes, shoes, a new skateboard for Lily. I bought a new blazer for my business trip to Europe, a couple outfits, and exceeded my budget by 4x. And we crammed into the Asian specialty beverage shop that sells drinks with jellies and rock salt, got a bubble waffle, and found a bench in the mall to share it.

Though it was a beautiful, almost-spring day, I did laundry in the afternoon: and paused over Lily’s orchestra shirt, brought back to the recent scene of her leaving the house to perform in the concert, but unable to proceed to the car, frozen in tears and anxiety: telling her it’s OK, it doesn’t really matter. How moments like this can cut into our self-esteem. And thinking that, leaving the support group with its flags and positive affirmations in the lobby, why it’s so important to accept people who need to feel a part, and how little it takes from us to just accept.

We lost an hour on Sunday and now it feels like early morning, or fall, though we’re tilting southward again, and all the birds are filling into the auditorium waiting for the show to begin.

Categories: parenting, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, LGBTQIA, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, parenting, William Pearse writer