I couldn’t understand why she pushed so hard. One would think you didn’t want your children to fly the coop too early. Wasn’t 17 still a kid? I recall seeing baby birds fall out of the eaves, toppled from their nests, their thin skin practically see- through, laying helplessly in the grass a bony sharp fleshy colored wing trapped underneath it’s weightless body. “don’t touch” replayed in my head but how could I not? I hoped I wasn’t see-through still. How did she even know I was ready?