My Daughter's First Paycheck Gift

My seventeen-year-old daughter got her first job this summer, scooping ice cream at the shop on Main Street. She came home sticky and exhausted every night.

When she got her first paycheck, she didn't tell me what she'd done with it. But the next Saturday, she took me to brunch at the nice place downtown, the one with cloth napkins, and insisted on paying.

"You always take me out," she said. "My turn." She ordered us both mimosas without the alcohol, and fancy French toast, and tipped the waiter thirty percent because "service jobs are hard."

I sat there across from my baby, who is suddenly a grown woman with a job and opinions about tipping, and I couldn't stop smiling. She asked what was so funny. I said nothing was funny. I was just happy.