(shh. This is not about Livy, and it is not annotated, and I apologize to all my fellow OS classicists who leave now, disappointed. All four of you.)

This is about my middle daughter Roxanne. I don't know if she reads my OS pieces -- she wouldn't admit it if she does -- but if I don't write the following I will split like a Black Krim heirloom. The title gives me cover. She might not speak to me for a week if she finds out I wrote about her.

I call her Rocky. Always have.

She got word this week from Marist. She is now accepted by four out of four colleges she applied to.

When Deborah was pregnant with Rocky  there were issues, so we had a large team in there. Before she was completely free the obstetrician and nurse declared "Well, will you look at her!" and "She's looking around" and "I've never seen that before".

Moments later we saw her, too. She was following things with her eyes, responding to movement and sound. Nary a peep. It was the talk of the delivery room and for days after, as they visited Deb in recovery.

^{(That's her with her new baby sister, Eliana, at right, way back when)}

When she was about one I was alone, watching her, on our farm in Saugerties. She was having one of her screaming fits. I walked, rocked, begged, performed. Finally I lay next to her, cradling her porcelain head, and said, pointlessly: "Rocky. Please. What do you want?"

There must have been something new and different in my voice, my expression, because she stopped abruptly. Stared at me.

Then, like some Runyonesque wise-guy, she raised her brows a fraction, and gave me a lop-sided grin.

I laughed.

She smiled.

She re-commenced screaming.

Until her sophomore year she was famous for being shy. Every fall the same thing: "Roxanne is very bright. But she needs to participate more." Every spring: "I am so glad Roxanne came out of her shell, sort of."

This in spite of of her phenomenal gymnastic ability, her intimidating, compact strength, her brilliant academics.

She is shy, true.

But she is also a watcher, a planner, a long-term calculator. This is the kid who took two years to get her front tuck perfect. Adding small corrections on thousands of tries, 9 hours a week, 3 long sessions: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, in the gym.

A kid who became NYS Beam Champion two years ago and shrugged it off. Seemingly.

A kid who at 14 looked up the fitness test for getting into the Marines Corps and snorted quietly in derision. Who can walk on her hands longer than anyone ever has at her high school. Ever, boy or girl.

Gymnastics training taught her to work hard to get what you want.

But let's get to the big deal: She is a brilliant designer.

There was a time when I could teach her, well, anything. I gave her the first lessons on figure proportions, gesture, how to accomplish the illusion of space, perspective. She soaked it up, learned it methodically.

She teaches herself now.

Rocky has an endearing and odd habit. She has learned to hide it, mostly. Ever since she was two, when she is learning something important for the first time, her eyelids drop, her jaw loosens and comes forward. At its extreme, her tongue appears, fat and low.

She looks in a word, sappy. But the dopier she looks, the more complete her absorption. And when she absorbs, it's forever. High honor roll, she is.

It was useful. It guided her mother and me. Helping with homework, we knew to move on when she scrunched her face ("I already know this"), and when to expand on something, when she got that sleepy, faraway, about-to-drool look.

She retains, and how. She has a different inner clockwork than me and thee.

Several years ago she set out to master fashion illustration. A thousand sketches later she had emptied her barrel, imitating all the books we bought her too, so she spent last summer taking a fashion illustration course at F.I.T., a high school kid on the long bus ride into the city. Hot summer city.

She mastered it.

She interned with the head of the Marist fashion department, cataloguing all of his images for him.

She knew she needed exceptional tailoring chops to get where she wants to go. So a year ago she apprenticed to a custom wedding dress maker/designer, a lovely, patient woman who had her take apart a complex dress and re-assemble it. She did.

Her sewn samples, original designs, and illustrations got her admittance into three of the four leading fashion schools in America. Proud papa.

She knows where she wants to go. She resolved her label design four years ago. (She will use her middle name, Rein, most likely, because A. She loves the sound and look of it, and B. it is the otherwise lost last name of her Bubbe, a Holocaust survivor.)

Rocky always knows what she wants, what she likes, what's good. She has taste and discernment and drive.

Rocky is also very hard to live with.

All the usual teenage stuff: "O-KAYYY!" and "I Kno-OWWW!". But also because she has a formidably glib, know-it-all dad, and an accomplished, passionate Jewish mother who would smother her with kisses daily if she could. So she is stubborn and begrudging.

But her quiet, standoffish self-definition? A shrewd move, given our family.

And if I prove to you here, now, how empathetic and kind she is? she really would never forgive me for telling the details, so just trust me. She is. Profoundly compassionate, grouchy exterior.

She makes an exception for her younger sister, Eliana (15), and to some degree with her grown older sister, Molly. She lets them in, relaxes and laughs.

Especially with Eli. The two are opposites -- Eli has funny bones, is completely at ease and unintimidated with people and 16 hand horses -- but together the two make one whole hilarious person. Like twins, sometimes, with their own language and jokes. They unabashedly love and like each other. Crack each other up, share/steal each other's clothes. Eli intrudes, insists, teases, annoys, and Rocky lets her. ONLY her, all the way.

Together they defeat us, utterly.

They discovered the dreadful secret: if they get excellent grades, excel at everything, and act responsibly? They get away with sheer bloody murder. It even works on their teachers and vice-principal.

On Thursday our local weekly paper came out. Every year they pick high-achieving students to give a full page profile to. In the interview with Roxanne I learned things I didn't know. Like: she decided on F.I.T.  She also credits her Zayde, who was a cutter and tailor on 7th avenue, and Deborah and I, as major positive influences in her life.

Pausing to soak that in. Sigh.

And she tells the world boldly how much she loves her sister Eliana and how close they are.

I am in dream-come-true time, people. Her school acceptances, being chosen for this interview, but especially the things she told them. Her self-posession.

We watched "The Devil Wears Prada" last night for the 30th time. Well, my 3rd time, their 30th. But I joined hem. I realized this was different: this was Rocky watching it as a young woman who will be living there this fall, following her dream. I dismally trudged into the living room and sat down for her sake, hoping my presence showed her I get it, that this has special meaning for her, this is HER life now.

A good role model, the Anne Hathaway character: young woman finding her way, being smart and effective and relentless, sorting out romance, managing Miranda, the boss from hell. Respecting the Art and success of Miranda, above all, but learning to navigate it. Anne sees how Miranda is a supreme artist (and troubled human being); but she deserves her place as fashion doyen, and how.

I snuck glances at Rocky. Get this: when Meryl's character was on the screen, Rocky's face changed. Lids lowered a bit, mouth fell open.

Sure, she sees how the apprentice made good.

But Rocky, my Rocky, wants to be Miranda. Intends it.

If I could change but one thing, it would be this: She would let me cradle her fine porcelain face in my big paws just once more before she leaves later this summer. Let me hug her once, long and fierce. We used to roughhouse and play, the girls and I. I taught them both how to box. Now it's "eww, Dad, please."

(Perhaps in a few years they will relax, punch me in the arm, let me squeeze them around the shoulders. Molly got over it, that teen thing. I get it. I understand.)

But otherwise? I wouldn't change a hair on Rocky's head. She is an artist of the first order, and her own person. I certainly hope she has better relationship skills than Miranda. But I understand what she is aiming at, and her aim is true.

I love Rocky something fierce, because she is something fierce, indeed.

Roxanne, self-portrait

Photograph by Roxanne

 Roxanne, asleep, with her mother Deborah