best laid plans

"So my mom and I had a conversation."

My heart sinks a little. She tells me, a little deliberately, how her mom doesn't want her to go to college here. How there's no reason to complete the program for free college money. She tells me about a hair salon in Mexico and her place in a chain of events. If her aunt gets married. If the new bride moves to Chicago. If this and if that, and if the other thing happens, then a business will change hands, and this girl will go back to Mexico. An aspiring nurse will cut hair.

I feel my shoulder drop. "All I'm saying," I lie, "is that you should never close a door."

"You know, " I say, "as well as I do--better--that sometimes things don't work out."

She nods.

"My mom said it would be easier. It does sound easier." She correctly interprets my look.

I can't help it: "But you have always wanted to be a nurse!" She agrees.

We sit.

"I didn't think you wanted to live there."

"I don't. But I might." I tell her I understand, that I think she probably can't know what she wants, since when she lived there she was just a girl. She continues to try to convince herself. I listen. The arguments are sound, some of them. More realistic, I finally confess. Except for the fact that they ignore everything she has always wanted and believed in order to satisfy someone else. But, family is family. I try to know my place.

I do not claim to have the answers. I do not criticize. "More education can't hurt," I tell her. I do not change her schedule, and she does not object.