One Sunday in January, my twelve year-old and I had an hour between appointments in the Denver suburbs, and found ourselves at a mall. In the age of “add to cart,” we rarely shopped together, and she had grown so much in the previous several months that none of her clothes fit. As we wandered into H&M, my daughter’s eyes lit up. She grabbed armfuls of clothes, including a pair of acid washed jeans with a chain that went from the front pocket to a back belt loop, each link a tiny heart. Maybe they won’t fit, I thought hopefully, as I trailed behind her in a daze. The Friday before, she had refused to go to school, her second school of the year, and one that had seemed promising only a couple of weeks before. I felt like I was hiking along the edge of a cliff in the fog; I had no idea what was going to happen, or how close we were to the edge.
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