The sight of math makes my stomach churn. The sound of similes makes them sigh. Growing up in a house full of arithmetic, a B was never acceptable. Dad, the lawyer, returned home from an Ivy League with a Law degree. Mom, the engineer attended three colleges? No big deal. Shelby, the daughter, writes poems “just for fun.” Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Brown...my four options for the next four years. 
Writing, writing, writing and rewriting is my intelligence, but arithmetic is theirs. While math teachers hate but English teachers applaud. At home, I hear disappointed sighs and see head shakes throughout the house. And at awkward parent-teacher conferences never hearing what they want from the teachers that “matter.” Graduation like a finish line that I might never cross.