My Little Genius

Ego aside, and that’s saying a lot, why on earth do I care whether my daughter is intellectually fearsome? I was once dubbed something like intellectually fearsome, and it’s not as though the brains that did so well on aptitude tests have ever made life even remotely easy for their bearer. My acute and penetrating consciousness did not spare me from being teased on the playground, that’s for sure. Nor did it make me an instant success with the ladies. Nor did it help me escape familial pain. Perhaps the opposite.

So, why would I wish a mind like her father’s on my sweet child? The answer is that, despite myself, I have enduring faith in my own mental calculator. For all the miscalculations it has rung up over the years, I still stubbornly attach something to the estimation of my teachers and mentors along the way. And what I wish for my daughter is the hope in my heart that these brains will, finally, perhaps years from now, seem to have been a gift, rather than a curse.