One word.

“Good.”

In October, H had her 13th birthday. It’s official: we now share a teenager.

I have been coming here trying to write her a letter and the thing that breaks my heart is that: I don’t know her enough these days to capture the bitter sweetest of her life like living with her siblings. She is a very private teen.

Mostly, H, has an aura of distance around her now. She hasn’t smiled wide or had big eyes in a long while.

The breadcrumb trail is sparse: I don’t hear her on the phone with her friends. Match is suppose to check her phone and doesn’t often. All the parenting things it holds are unavailable to me. We don’t have knock down fights over anything. Nor long, conversation inducing drives to many places. She doesn’t put her music on in the car so we get a taste of what she’s listening too. We don’t see her at pick up from sports making small talk with teammates. We don’t hear lots of stories. She doesn’t share much on social media. She doesn’t have words sometimes to clearly explain when things are wrong.

We are in the land of one word answers these days: “Good.” “Fine.” “Yeah.” Are usually the answers to questions about her life. Sometimes we get an “I dunno.”

Whether that’s everywhere or just here is hard to tell. Whether that’s how Match was at this age is something I’d never know for sure. Two weekends each month is not enough time to have things spill out into the open so we can see what we are trying to parent through. So the past two years and as teenagehood trudges on, we’ll be here and do the things we can.

I worry, but I have faith that she’ll find her way. I usually find giving things time and listening leads to unexpected joys. I am sure H will find her way to big smiles and wide eyes again here and everywhere.

In the meantime, this part of life is hard and awkward and fraught with unease. That is just how growing up and through to adulthood is. I try to carry grace for it all and take each, “Good,” we are graced with as enough– even if we all know it isn’t the whole truth of her life.