Don't criticize me for cleaning Em's bedroom this week. Yes, it is pampering her a little. Yes, she should have done it herself. Yes, she knows these things. She also knows I’m looking out for her, that I know she's going through a hard time right now, that I'm on her side. She knows I don't think being a parent is about winning. It's not a game or a war. So I did this for her because I love her and because I want her to have a space that is clean and bright, where she can find her things when she needs them. It is good for her, especially when she's having a hard time.

Why do so many people treat kids' issues like they're nothing? It makes me so angry. Okay, yes, thirteen-year-olds are sometimes difficult. Often. They are mercurial and obstinate and dramatic and sullen, all at the same time. But the stuff that bothers them really does bother them! (Once I saw this little kid being tugged along by his impatient mom; he was shrieking about sand in his shoe, and she was telling him to stop being a baby, it was just sand – and all I could think of was how often I've stopped to get sand out of my own shoe because it was bugging me. Treat the kid like a person, lady. Of course, I didn't say that to her at the time.) So what is my point? I probably don't have one. Except… I remember being thirteen and scared and angry all the time. I remember feeling like no one understood me. I'm sure – absolutely positively sure – that Em thinks I don't understand her, and she is right. I don't understand everything about her. I don't see the personal stuff she deals with at school or really understand why she hates me one day and adores me the next. I understand some things. I know some things that she doesn't think about: that she won't be thirteen for very long, that the people that torture her at school will grow up, too, that some of them will turn out to be rotten people and some will turn out to be okay. I know that she will survive this. She will survive boyfriends and failed exams and a clueless mother. So I don't understand her and she doesn't understand me? So what. At least her room is clean for now.

Driving along, we all noticed the readout on the stereo flashing messages at us. You don't think they were at us? "EARTH GET READY HERE COMES THE SUN" Any reasonable person would have gone home and started building the reflector panels. Any reasonable person.