Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

This is all I am to her now: a pair of legs in running shoes, two arms strung with braided wire. She heaves a carton sagging with CDs at me and I accept it gladly, lifting with my legs, not bending over, raising each foot high enough to clear the step. Fortunate to be of any use to her at all, I wrestle, stooped and single-handed, with her mattress in the stairwell, saying nothing as it pins me, sweating, to the wall. Vacuum cleaner, spiny cactus, five-pound sacks of rice and lentils slumped against my heart: up one flight of stairs and then another, down again with nothing in my arms.