Facing the Ocean.

Ashes was accepted to her third college last night. Three of the four colleges we visited have all accepted her. The fourth put her on wait list.

"Now listen,"I said as I was making dinner in our tiny kitchen, and turned around and grabbed her by the shoulders to emphasize my point. "And this is really important. Promise me you'll stick with this. Don't drop out. That first year in college is really stressful and hard, and especially in the first six months you're going to feel the urge to give it up. You're going to miss home, miss your family. It's not going to feel right. Fight the feeling. It gets better, I promise."

She smiled her sad insecure smile, grown a tad more secure by all the good news. "It gets better, huh?"

I smiled, and averted my eyes. "It's kind of like being gay." I moved back to my cooking, amused by my audacity.

She smiled and moved back to the living room.

A few minutes later, she returned, clutching her signed copy of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. One of her favorite books, something she's been trying to get me to pay attention to for months now.

"I want to read this to you," she said, and opened up the first page. "I think he kind of writes the way you do." She cleared her throat. "'Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time thinking about death.'"

I cooked, I listened. I finished cooking, I listened. I sat down in the living room, she sat across from me. I listened as she read the whole first chapter, strong and clear. I sat there, watching her, listening, proud of what I was seeing, what I was hearing.

There's only so much more time left for listening. I want it all.

Apply, yourself

"Dad, can we watch Rent tonight?"
"Sure!" Then I think about it. "Well, maybe...it depends what Corb's reaction will be when he finds out he has to sit through all that...ohhhhh..." I grit my teeth. "Shhh! Now listen, Ashes, I'm putting together all the stuff for your college apps. We need to concentrate on this."

And with that, I start to Google the next college on the list, so we can start the application.

Ashes nods and goes back to watching the fifth episode of Gossip Girl she's seen that day. Then, suddenly: "I want to play with her hair."

I look up from my typing. "What?"

"That girl. On the screen. I want to play with her hair. It's long, pretty, and blond."

"That's nice, Ashes. Now, would you mind it if we--"

"Oh my God! Did you just hear what Chuck Bass just said?"

Oh, my Lord. This kid! I decide to go travel down the path of patience. "No, Ashes, I was trying to concentrate on your college applications. You know, the ones that are due, like...now?"

"Oh." There's silence, except for the meaningless drone of Gossip Girl. Ah good, perhaps we can now make some progress! I start to type a little faster, unburdened by the curse of inter--

"Dad, didn't you say that Chuck Bass was from Desperate Housewives?"

--uptions. Dammit!

"Dad?"

I glance up at the television screen. "No, Ashes. I said that the guy standing next to him was." Then, I squint my eyes. "But on second thought, I think I thought he was somebody else."

"I mean, don't you just want to slap him in the face? Chuck Bass. Like, ten years ago, I would have totally slapped him."

I'm not sure exactly what that means. "Ashes, why don't we turn off Gossip Girl for just a little while? I bet we can bang this out in ten minutes. It really doesn't look that bad at all, really. We can just turn down the noise and focus on this, and then, you can go back to watching Gossip Girl. Okay?"

"Oh. Sure."

I turn off the television. Silence fills the room. Ah, this is nice...silence. I glance back down at the screen, and start to review the next field that we have to fill. "Now then, it looks as if we need to--"

"Oh my God! Dad, did you see on TV that there's this family that's adopted five monkeys? They totally run around and torment the family. Have you ever seen a monkey holding a steak knife? It's kind of adorable."

At that point, I want to throw up my hands. This is sheer craziness! I wonder what the college app process would have been like if I hadn't asked for a little concentration...

And yet.

Above all else, I am acutely aware that I am going to miss all of this, ten months from now.