It’s been just Amanda and I for the last ten years. Her mother left for greener pastures, so I picked up the roll of the mother/father duo and kept chugging right along. It was a rough start, but we’ve found a comfortable routine. Life’s good now.
I work as a carpentry refurbisher out of our home-shop. Amanda’s a study bug and spends most of her time prepping for college entrance exams. A med-school hopeful. She’s grown into a beautiful and intelligent woman, but I worry about her social ineptitude. She has friends, but I feel that she tends to throw most of her social efforts at me instead of them. She’s had a boyfriend but refused to bring him over and they managed to stay together for about a summer. She rarely has friends over and when she does, she usually tries to get me to hang with them.
Amanda overly relies on me for everything, I wouldn’t call her helpless but she rarely makes choices without running them by me first. I’ve tried to foster a bit more independence in her, but she usually deflects with, “I’m just asking your opinion daddy, I’ll handle it.”