The cab is more minivan than car, but because it’s the recognizable Dupont shade that signifies New York City, we hail it as though we know what we’re doing. The driver, pleasant and friendly, blares K-Love Christian Rock from his speakers. His left pinky nail, thick and shaped like a Swiss Army knife scoop, extends a good inch beyond his finger pad.

“You know what that’s for?” my daughter whispers, motioning to his nail utensil.

“Cutting cocaine.”

Ryann raises her eyebrows, impressed that I possess this knowledge. I feel victorious. It’s like that with the under generation, they always think they invented all things sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. I’ve never done coke, but I have the Netflix.

“What a beautiful name it is. What a beautiful name it is,” sings the cabbie. “The name of Jesus.”

I am intrigued by the contrast of a Jesus lover slicing and shoveling snow up his nose. It’s hard to know with whom you are dealing – and, with what they are dealing.

A call comes in on what appears to be a personal phone, maybe a flip or burner. The cabbie speaks in muted Spanish. The man on the other end leaves lulls in the conversation and I wonder if he has dozed off, then I determine that he’s taking a bath. The sloshes are unmistakable.

The note I drop in my journal says, Pinky K-Love, which I decide will be my name should I become a Christian rapper, of which the likelihood is never.

Ryann asks me if I catch any of the Spanish. “I can’t really hear him,” I mouth. “What do you think he’s saying?”

We crack up at this because after two summers of online Spanish which involved us yelling at one another in both languages and straight up cheating, her vocabulary extends to autobus and Arroz con Pollo, abbreviated on most menus to ACP.

We weren’t parents who intervened on behalf of our kids. We hung our heads in disappointment at the science fair while the children of the engineers and CFOs ignited the pottery volcano that they fired in the brick kiln that they built from the rescued debris of a home that they reconstructed as Habitat for Humanity volunteers. No siree. We kept our chins up when our daughter flung in a hasty last-minute entry of a stick figure sketch of the reproductive system of the North American snail.

We figured it was her future to blow, until it came down to Spanish, which was crossing the center lane into the oncoming traffic of our future. Broken down to basic human motive, said child must complete foreign language requirement in order to graduate in order to move out and attend higher education facility and reside in dorm room. Como se dice muy malo?

That’s behind us now. We somehow got our children raised and through college. It went by fast. Online Spanish was one of many memories that played in the movie of my mind while in the Big Apple, Ryann on the cusp of her dream to study and become a famous make-up artist. Pinky K-Love lurking in the peripheral side mirror.

In our weekend of touring the school and scouting out neighborhoods and apartments, everything felt magnified, amped on emotional uppers. Our own lack of ease in city navigation, blondeness, and southern voices had us standing outside the fray. No one else noticed, because the sheer volume of people in New York reduces you to a tiny sprite on the significance scale. In my mind, I was a cross between Charlene Darling and Suzanne Sugarbaker. Ryann, a mixture of the icons, Punky Brewster and Rhianna.

She felt it too. Sometimes having a daughter offers an acceleration through all the stages of grief in a thirty-minute timeframe. Change can do that, and girl children have mastered the execution to an art form. Denial, fear, anger, bargaining, resolution – we wrestled with them all over a slice of pumpkin bread in a Brooklyn coffee shop.

The stakes seem so big. Win or lose, hard and loud. Find magic and realize goals or get snatched on the subway. All these possibilities and big feels kept me up. Our room overlooked the Hudson River, I pulled back the shade, the lights twinkled as the boats moved along into the wee hours. An unsleeping river with an unsleeping mom in a city that knows no slumber.

While Ryann snoozed in the hotel room beside me, her flaxen hair sweaty and brow furrowed in serious concentration, I saw the remnants of the same face I watched in the crib. I considered the enormity of the magnificent universe. I thought of the joy and worry of being a mom and raising a child who would walk to the edge of her dream and clear the platform with a wide arc, spreading her wings of courage, even through doubt and fear.