It’s Good to Be the (Dowager) Queen

I popped out west to see my daughter and grandkids. Everybody is impossibly lovable, of course, and I was sorry to leave them, but also… happy to get home. Beloved offspring has two kids under the age of three. She is several months into a job doing community social work. This is where the social worker stops by the house to see if you managed to get to any of your 12-step meetings this week, if your children showed up for school, and if the nasty boyfriend has honored the no contact order. If not, as the therapist on the case, it’s my daughter’s job to help the family plan a way forward, stick to it, process the results, and acquire new coping skills. She’s at the point, after six years of education in her field, where she realizes how much more there is to learn, how serious the whole undertaking is, and how little can be done in all too many cases. This is a painful phase of anybody’s professional development, sometimes referred to as the Dunning-Kruger ditch. From overestimating…