When Samantha was four, everything was about dogs. We talked about dogs. We read about dogs. She drew pictures of dogs and walked our dogs on leashes inside the house and pretended to be a dog. On rainy days, we would go to PetSmart to watch the dogs being groomed. It was all dogs. All day. Every day.

She was interested in numbers–as long as the numbers were about dogs. So I asked her one day, “If you have a mommy dog at the animal shelter, and she has fourteen puppies and you find homes for eight of the puppies, how many puppies still need homes?”

Her immediate answer was, “None because I will take all six of the puppies home with me–AND the mommy dog, too.”

It would be another two years before I could ask her what fourteen minus eight was and get anything close to six. Math only mathed for her if it was math about dogs.

Fast forward to the summer after sixth grade. She took a math review class on Outschool. The teacher asked everyone what their favorite number was. Samantha’s immediate response, like this was something she felt in her SOUL and had been just WAITING to be asked, was, “Two–because two plus two is four, AND two times two is four. Also, two is the only prime number that is even.” Then she looked at me, hoping that I would change my favorite number on the spot to two because who could love any number but two?

Throughout seventh grade, I had to bribe her to check her work before turning it in. Because, you see, she would get so distracted by the lack of dogs in the math problems that she would write things like seven times seven is fourteen. (I am quite sure that if she had seven people each bring her a van full seven dogs, she would know straight away that there is no possible way that she only had fourteen dogs.)

In eighth grade, she had a math teacher who resonated with her. He told dad jokes. He told math jokes. He bounced around the room on his tippy-toes, tossing out math trivia. Samantha was hooked. This new way of doing math was even better than bringing home six puppies and a mommy dog.

She baked this teacher a pie for Pi Day with a cut out in the top crust the shape of the pi symbol.

From then on, she was lost to me. No more box and whisker plots. No more ratios. No more solving equations. It was her and her math book.

Now she is doing geometry behind my back.

She hasn’t asked for help or so much as shown me a math problem in two years.

This is what they mean, I suppose, when they say your child will leave the nest. It’s like she has grown her own math wings and has no need for me anymore.

She is going to go through the entire rest of her math life without me.

Which is a little disappointing because I was so looking forward to revisiting those calculus problems about ladders sliding down walls (because that is the most practical use there is for math).

So much has changed.

And yet.

And yet, two is still her favorite number. And it’s still because two plus two is four, and two times two is four, and two is the only even prime number.

And if she had the chance, she would bring home six puppies and a mommy dog from the shelter.