In two months, my daughter will be 18

Legally mandated child support ends in two months, when India attains adulthood. India will enter her third year of college in the fall, and I earn $11 per hour at my job in child care. I expected to be quite a bit further along in my economic stability, but I'm not, and you know what? I don't care.

My own mother died young, when I was only ten years old. My dad was hopelessly ineffectual, my stepmother was wrong-thinking and critical, some of my siblings were lost to drugs or cancer, alienation or religiosity. In romantic relationships, I never made it past eight years before something explosive drove me down the road to another personal crisis.

I have a friend who repeatedly asserts his belief that "everything will work out," which used to infuriate me but now resonnates with my deepest understanding of life. Everything does work out, we get what we need, and there is incomparable beauty in the experience of leading a child into competent adulthood. Everyone should be as blessed as I am.