Requiem for the pacifier

On one of the last nights of 2015, I put my 3-year-old to sleep with his pacifier for the last time.

Last known pacifier photo: Dec. 27, 2015

 I didn't know it then — isn't that the way it always is with lasts? We'd been working up to it for weeks (or was it months? years?): dropping subtle hints about how the pacifier might be infecting him with germs, talking about when he'd feel ready to go without it, 'practicing' the art of sleeping with no paci ("And then I'll tuck you in, just like always," I'd say soothingly as he snuggled under his fleece blanket, pretending to be sleeping).

But we hadn't yet pulled the trigger: We hadn't yet called the Binky Fairy, or poked a hole in the tip, or pronounced it "lost," or taken it to Build-A-Bear to insert into the heart of a stuffed animal, or attached it to a balloon and launched it aloft, or hung it on a tree in Borough Park, or visited a friend's newborn to give it away, or done any of the hundred other things parents suggest you do when you're ready for your kid to give up his pacifier.

Because the truth is, I thought Eli wasn't yet ready to give it up. I knew how much it comforted him when he was sleepy, or sad. I knew he hadn't gone to sleep without it at night since he was literally 7 weeks old. If it were a blankie (he has one of those too), or a stuffed animal, I thought, I wouldn't try to take it away. How could I do it with this?

 For Eli, the pacifier seemed like a drug, one he'd take a hit off to function properly at stressful times of the day. In the midst of a tantrum he'd run back to his room and pop it in his mouth, sucking at it contemplatively while he scrubbed the tears from his face with his blankie. (This is exactly as pitiful a sight as you're imagining.)

So, like a drug, the pacifier became something secret, a hidden shame. I tried to impose rules: The pacifier is only for sleeping. The pacifier is only for your bedroom. And maybe your carseat so you can chill out when I'm driving instead of screaming like a madman. The pacifier is only for use three times in a day when not sleeping, then you have to put it away. On and on.

I wasn't sentimental about switching Eli from a bottle to a cup, or from diapers to underwear (well, I guess no one is really sentimental about that one). But something told me I was hanging on to his pacifier as much for me as for him. It was the very last thing left that signaled "baby," literally the only constant that had been with us from birth. For three years I'd listened to the sound of that squishy sucking noise when Eli slept. I'd fished pacifiers out from under dusty beds and from under car floormats, from the crumby depths of my purse and the crevices of the stroller. I'd produced pacifiers in strange hotel rooms and in doctor's offices, on long car rides and on long runs, in the middle of crying fits and in the middle of the night.

On our last night in Lancaster over winter break Eli announced that he would be going to sleep without his pacifier. "I don't need it," he said. "Just my soft blankie." As we read books, sang songs and cuddled in his hotel bed I actually felt my heart hammering. Was this it? Was it really going to be this easy?

Then, as I headed for the door, Eli stopped me. "I want my paci," he whimpered in the dark.

Phil accused me of being soft for giving it to him. But was a hotel room in Pennsylvania really the best place to try a paci-free night for the first time?! Instead, when we got back home, we practiced. And then after several nights of simulations, Eli got sick. He was so tired and so congested that for two nights straight he drifted off to sleep without his pacifier  — something he had literally never done before.

It was like a fever had been broken — the detox from the pacifier drug, if you will. And on the first night of the new year, he went to bed healthy, but without a pacifier, for the first time.

When you're a brand-new mom, you're so eager to keep track of all the exciting firsts: the first rollover, the first smile, the first steps, the first word. It's only later that you look back and realize you've missed all the lasts: the last time you swaddled him up in the Miracle Blanket, the last jar of puréed baby food, the last time you read "Where is Baby's Belly Button?" before he tore all the flaps off. As I reflected, a little numbly, about Eli's sudden departure from the land of pacifier addiction, I suddenly realized that without his beloved pacifier he might very well not ever take another nap in our apartment. At the thought of that I burst into tears like a cartoon character.

The next day, Eli decided it was time to "do my work," which somehow translated into moving his bed away from the wall and clearing out everything that had fallen behind it. In the rubble I was grimly entertained to see not one, not two, but FOUR pacifiers. I rushed to snatch them up before Eli could notice them and pop one back in his mouth, but Eli was too fast for me.

"Pacifiers!" he laughed. He gathered them up and deposited them into my hands. "Here, Mom," he said casually. "I'm not using my pacifier anymore."

It hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. The other day, in the midst of a morning meltdown, I heard Eli retreat to his bedroom and sob, "I want my paci," like he was realizing afresh the pain of saying goodbye.

Because even though he must know perfectly well where all those pacis have ended up (he's spotted them in the kitchen drawer), he hasn't asked for them back. Not once.

I don't think I'll miss the pacifier in our lives. What I will miss, though, is the sweetness it represented, the simple contentment of being able to bring peace and joy to my child with a teeny plastic bulb. It's no longer so easy to soothe his broken heart. But then again, growing up isn't easy, either.

Rusty Nobody is coming to town

When Santa saunters into the room at my husband's holiday work party, he's greeted with gleeful applause and shouts of delight. One little girl actually jumps up and down, squealing, "Santa!" The children are entranced.

All except one: my 3-year-old, who's glancing around with his eyebrows raised as if to say, "Huh?" When he spots the jolly bearded guy in the red suit, his eyes brighten. "Look! It's Rusty Nobody!" he exclaims. "Hi, Rusty Nobody!"

Who's Rusty Nobody? It's just a silly, made-up name Eli coined for Santa Claus — because he doesn't actually know who Santa Claus is.

Don't get me wrong: Eli loves Christmas. He just doesn't know that he loves it. He likes red and green well enough. He appreciates that every December, colored lights appear on the trees on our walk to school. He knows that some people pick out Christmas trees and bring them home — and this year, in just his third holiday season ever, I had to answer his first question about why we're not bringing home a Christmas tree. ("Because Grandma would have a heart attack" was edited out of my explanation.)

But at Eli's Jewish daycare, he spent the month of December learning what he felt were the most important things about Hanukkah (did you know that a menorah is actually called a hanukiyah? Eli does): that you can eat donuts fried in oil and how to cheat at dreidel (always turn your dreidel to gimel and then claim the whole pot for yourself).

So one day, when we were out admiring some holiday light decorations, it occurred to me that he probably had no idea who Santa Claus even was. We paused next to a giant inflatable Santa, his belly jiggling in the breeze.

"Do you know who this is?" I asked. Eli nodded enthuasiastically.

"Yeah!" he said. "That's Rusty Nobody!"

Sure, I thought, let's go with that.

December, more than any other time of year, sets up this kind of dichotomy: Why don't we get to bring a tree into our house? Why don't we string up colored lights?

I'm not a fan of the explanation that goes "We don't celebrate Christmas; we celebrate Hanukkah instead" — as if Hanukkah is supposed to be just some stand-in for Christmas where we've swapped out menorahs for Christmas trees and soufganiyot for figgy pudding.

Nor does explaining the complicated set of beliefs that separate Judaism and Christianity seem appropriate. After all, it's not like everyone who celebrates Christmas believes that the birth of Jesus Christ signified the coming of a Savior.

As I was puzzling over how to grapple with these questions, I realized something. I know that Eli knows about being Jewish — we light candles on Shabbat, we go to temple semi-regularly, we celebrate holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Passover — but does he know we are Jewish? For all he knows, maybe everyone lights candles and eats challah on Friday nights. Maybe everyone gives tzedakah and sings the Sh'ma right before bed.

I'd been so busy trying to weave Jewishness seamlessly into the fabric of our lives that I'd forgotten to give it a name. To say, We are Jewish, the same way I would say We are New Yorkers or We are Mets fans or We are runners — to make it clear that it's something to be proud of.

As Eli grows older, I want him to feel the same way about Christmas that I did when I was growing up: It was fun to help friends decorate their trees and nice to see cool light displays at others' houses. But it wasn't my holiday.

So when Eli spotted his pal "Rusty Nobody" at my husband's holiday party, I couldn't help but stifle a grin. A few days later, we found ourselves in Amish Country, riding a steam train through the countryside. Out the window, I spotted a large nativity display emblazoned with the words IS CHRIST IN YOUR CHRISTMAS?

I had to admit that he wasn't. But then again, neither was Rusty Nobody.

Wonderland

It's winter break and I found myself with some unexpected time off from work, so we decided to spend a few days in Lancaster after Christmas. I carefully plotted an itinerary packed with all the things I thought Eli would love — a hotel with an indoor water playground, a train ride, a visit to an amusement park. I packed snacks, the iPad, three different kinds of outerwear (the forecast was wildly variable) and raingear (just in case). I factored in time for naps, meals and driving.

What I forgot to take into account were the wild mood swings of my 3-year-old. The first 24 hours of our trip were, for the most part, pretty fantastic, punctured by a few memorable hair-raising, death-defying tantrums — we're talking running away from Mommy and Daddy down the hallway of a hotel wearing only a wet bathing suit (tantrum level: expert). By the time we were seated for lunch at Good 'N Plenty — an Amish-style restaurant so famous that it has a whole brochure to itself — I felt rather on edge, and it didn't help that (1) Good 'N Plenty was virtually silent and (2) the couple at the table next to us looked exactly like this.

One blessedly peaceful car nap in the Amish countryside later, we found ourselves at Dutch Wonderland (which, for the uninformed, is an amusement park for young children with an unspecified, vaguely medieval castle theme and absolutely no Dutch connection whatsoever). (Side note: While Eli was napping, Phil directed me to drive to a roadside pretzel stand in the middle of farmland. They were closed, but a perusal of Yelp reviews revealed that there is a dude who drives from New York City to Lancaster twice a year just for the pretzels, so how bummed are we that we didn't get to try them? Side note #2, there was literally a sign on the door that said "Temporarily closed; if you need anything, come to the house and we will open for you," and we should have gone to the house and asked for a pretzel!)

The very first thing that happened at Dutch Wonderland was that Eli really wanted to ride the train, but he did not want to wait in the line to ride the train. If you are a parent who has ever anticipated and then tried to head off a public tantrum, you know exactly how this moment felt. All my fight-or-flight instincts started to kick in. It felt like I was in for a long afternoon of reasoning with Eli, of modeling patience, of desperately cooking up little games to play while waiting in line. In short: a long afternoon of acting like an adult. Oh, the humanity!

But by some miracle we were the last riders to make it on to the train. As we started to chug around the park, Eli giggled with genuine glee every time we saw the signal arms clanging down to block the track. And a funny thing happened: I started to have fun. He was so happy, so absolutely loving the ride that I stopped fretting about the next meltdown around the corner and started to enjoy seeing him so happy.

Hours later, we were heading out of "storytime with Princess Brooke" when it suddenly seemed to have grown dark. I suggested to Eli that it might be a fun time to go on the SkyRide, a kind of open-air tram that takes you all the way across the park, to see the lights in the dark from the air. When we realized the ride was one-way only, Phil said he'd meet us at the other end.

As we waited on line, it suddenly started to rain, and as we headed further up the stairs, I realized it was growing chilly. Our jackets were in the stroller with Phil. A guy coming off the ride advised us against it — "The rain hits you in the face and it's really cold out there!" he said — and I tried to convince Eli to skip it. But he was determined: He wanted to ride.

The ride is like a ski lift, in that it doesn't stop when your car comes around. So I hoisted Eli up into the seat and quickly settled in next to him, and off we went.

There was a brief, terrifying moment where I thought about all the tantrums we had endured over the past few days and about how high up in the air we were and how easily it seemed like Eli could slide under the bar. If he loses it in mid-air, we're goners, I thought. But the same thing happened that always happens when I expect the worst out of Eli: He surprises me by being a champ. He was totally unbothered by the chilly wind or the droplets of water beating against our backs or the fact that we were really, really, really high up in the air. He chatted away about the view ("Look at that ride spinning!"), our fellow passengers riding in the opposite direction ("Look, he's all by himself! He looks cold!") and my death grip on his arm ("Mommy, why do you have your arm around me so tight?").

Later, after we reunited with Phil and rushed in from the rain to a memorably awful dining experience known as "Merlin's Buffet," I tried to explain the whole experience to him while Eli nonchalantly munched on his mac and cheese: the rainbow holiday lights twinkling below us, the cool expanse of the dark sky, Eli's enthusiastic ramblings. And as I talked ("It was kind of terrifying, but also kind of magical"), I realized it was sort of a perfect encapsulation of parenting itself. It's holding it together when you're secretly concerned your kid might fall apart. It's preparing yourself to be surprised by your child and sparkling with pride when it happens. It's going on an adventure when logic says you probably shouldn't, knowing you can't stop the ride if you want to get off — and never letting go of your kid's hand.

It's kind of terrifying, but also kind of magical.

I've written before about how I struggled with PPD when Eli was born. And here's a secret: I continue to struggle with it, mostly in the form of guilt about how I didn't enjoy those newborn days like everyone warned me I should. The morning after the SkyRide I had this weird thought (while running on the treadmill at the gym, of all places): When Eli was born I could only see how high up in the air we were, how far we could fall if we slipped. I could only feel how chilly the wind was and how the rain was beating against my back. I only saw the parts of the ride that were the most terrifying, because I didn't yet have Eli to point out how the lights were glowing and the rides were spinning and the music was playing. I needed Eli to help me realize that the cold and the wet and the height wasn't such a big deal. I needed Eli to show me everything that was magical about the wonderland.

A beautiful world

Last week, on the advice of an ENT after a neverending sinus infection, I had allergy testing done. I hate needles, and I hate doctor's offices, and I hate medical testing in general, so as I sat there watching my arms begin to swell up and burn I started to feel flushed and lightheaded. I dropped my chin against my chest, willing myself not to pass out.

Then a semi-ridiculous thing happened: I thought about Eli at the doctor's office letting the doctor look in his ears even though he hates it when the doctor looks in his ears. I told myself, "You have to be brave like Eli!" And it worked.

That night at bedtime, I told Eli I had been thinking about him. "I was scared because I didn't want to get the shot," I told him. "But I said, 'I have to be brave like Eli!'"

Eli threw his arms around me like he understood somehow that I was paying him a compliment of the highest order. "You're the best mommy in the whole entire world!" he said.

They say that for everything there's a season, and December seems to be the season for sweetness for Eli; last December, I wrote about a poignant walk to school with Eli where he saw some holiday lights and proclaimed, "Lights! They're beautiful!"

This morning, on the same route to school with my bigger and more verbal kid, Eli gave Phil a king's farewell as Phil headed down the stairs into the subway. Sticking his head through the railing as Phil descended, Eli called after him, "Bye! Love you! See you after school! Love you! See you later!" Then he blew kisses. Hurrying to join me, grinning, he told me, "I gave Daddy kisses for the stairs." Then he looked down thoughtfully. "The subway is under the stairs," he said.

"The subway is underneath us right now," I agreed.

He studied the sidewalk, then looked up, taking in busy Queens Boulevard: the man in a can selling coffee and bagels, the dozen newspaper boxes in a row, the trucks unloading in front of Key Food and CVS. Then he looked up at me.

"This is a beautiful world," he said.

This is such a beautiful world, Eli, and I'm so glad you're in it with me.

Happy holidays.

It isn't a rat race. It isn't a race at all.

Every evening, I sit in my office and watch the clock as the minutes tick forward. When it hits 6 p.m., I grab all my things and race for the door.

It's not because I hate my job. It's because on a good day (and we all know how frequently the MTA has "good days"), it takes me at least an hour to get home. In an ideal world I walk through the door at 7 p.m. and we aim to have Eli in bed by 7:30.

Every evening is a race against time.

I spend that narrow half-hour on the bridge between two worlds, alternately wishing time would speed up and slow down. Usually I'm in such a rush to jump into our bedtime routine that I don't change out of my work clothes, sometimes shedding my tights in the foyer of our apartment and counting down the minutes until I can unhook my bra. (You know you've done it too.) (On some nights Eli has been known to survey me suspiciously and ask: "Why aren't you in your pajamas?")

If he's not already dressed for bed, I hurry Eli into his pajamas and into the bathroom to brush his teeth. If he stalls, I threaten to reduce the number of books we read at bedtime (three is the sacred number). I limit the number of drinks of water he can have and the number of times he can say goodnight to Daddy and the number of minutes I'll hang out in his room.

Then after I've left and am finally, blessedly unhooking my bra, I realize that I miss him.

In the mornings, too, we have plenty of time between when my early bird wakes up and when we have to leave for school, yet we seem to be always rushing. He doesn't want to walk himself to the elevator, or he wants a snack "for the road," or he wants to bring a gigantic fire truck, presumably so that he can refuse to let other kids play with it. I hurry to school, swerving the stroller around puddles and poop and people waiting for the bus, and then I linger in the doorway, wanting to watch him a little longer, not wanting to say goodbye.

I've written before about how challenging it is to be a working parent. (Funnily enough, it was right at this same time of year. I guess December, when the days are short and the holidays are imminent, is an especially tough time of year to be a working parent!) In the year since I wrote that post, there's been a lot in the news about companies offering more parental leave for newborns, but other than that, when it comes to flexibility and work/life balance, not a lot has changed. I still feel guilty racing out the door of my office at 6 p.m. when everyone else is still at their desks as if I don't have a single second to spare (spoiler alert: I don't), and I also still feel guilty racing Eli out the door of our apartment every morning as he casts pitiful glances backwards at all the toys he's leaving behind.

Lately there's also been a nice dash of existential melancholy mixed in, too: What am I doing this for? What's the point of all this? It seems like an apt question that applies whether "this" is "editing the copy on this PDF of this flier for the millionth time" or "snapping Eli's chuggers together, at his request, then waiting patiently as he has a complete meltdown in reaction to the fact that I snapped the chuggers together at his request."

This morning, when we were about three-quarters of the way to school, Eli announced that he had to pee. So I started running. "I see it!" Eli shouted as we neared his school, hopping casually out of his stroller as I panted and wiped the sweat from my neck. It was fitting: These days I feel like I'm always running toward or away from something, constantly in a hurry to get somewhere so that when I get there I can think ahead to being somewhere else.

(For the record, he squeezed out approximately one drop of pee after dancing into his classroom and breezily greeting everyone like he hadn't made me sprint the final quarter-mile to school.)

It's fitting then too that I'm participating in the holiday running streak, running a mile every day between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Because every day this month I've found myself out running, wanting to get it over with while simultaneously wishing it could last longer, not sure where I'm running to or how fast I'm planning to run there, not even sure if it's the best idea to be out running at all.

When your child says he wants to hurt you: A How Not To Guide

Recently Eli has been experimenting with exploring boundaries and testing limits to see how we'll react, particularly when he says things that are inappropriate or offensive.

In other words, he's acting like an asshole.

Most frequently this manifests itself in him telling us that he wants to hurt us. I want to punch you, he'll say, or I want to shoot you. Sometimes he says this mid-tantrum, through sobs, his chest heaving. Other times it's almost playful, scornful, like a dare.

I have a master's degree in Child Development from a respected university. I've read my fair share of parenting books — not to mention those weekly "Your Preschooler This Week" BabyCenter emails. So I know how to respond appropriately in these situations. I know that I'm supposed to remain calm and unruffled and say something like, "I can tell you're really angry right now" or "You must be feeling very upset."

Is that what I actually did this past week? Let's get real. HELL NO.

The other day, when Eli announced that he wanted to punch me, I responded "Then I don't want to be around you" and I closed the bedroom door. And locked it.

I did. I locked my 3-year-old out of my bedroom. Would you want to be around someone who tells you he wants to punch you?

The next time it happened, I promptly burst into tears. Not fake I'm-trying-to-get-you-to-empathize tears but real, frustrated tears, the tears of a woman who wonders where she's gone wrong and why her sweet boy has turned into a sociopath.

"Mommy? Why are you crying?" Eli asked tentatively.

"Because you keep saying you want to punch me and it makes me feel so SAD!" I replied. Eli's lip quivered. Soon he too was wailing.

"Now I'm sad like you!" he cried. "We're both sad!"

The first time he said it, I silently carried him to his room, deposited him on his bed, closed the doors to his room and ordered him to stay in there for three minutes. In other words, a classic time-out. When the timer beeped, he tearfully apologized and vowed that he would never say it again. But "never" is to 3-year-olds what "fact" is to Ben Carson, so...

Of course, in case you hadn't heard, time-outs are now cruel and abusive. I get this in theory: Isolating my child when he's having a hard time sends him the message that it's not OK to be having a hard time and doesn't really help him deal with having a hard time.

On the other hand, theory is a heck of a lot easier than practice, and sometimes in practice isolating myself when my child is having a hard time helps send us both the message that at least no one will get strangled when he's having a hard time.

Later that day, I did what I always do when I've made the wrong parenting decision and want to feel guilty about it: I turned to Google for advice on what I should have done instead. Google confirmed that I was, in fact, the worst mom in the world and that the right reaction would have been to remain calm and unruffled and that is really hard to do when you want to punch a wall, Google.

But what I appreciated was the psychology behind why it's prudent to do this, according to this helpful article: "Your child needs an accepting witness who loves him even when he's angry."

It's fitting that the site is called Aha! Parenting because reading it, I did have an aha! moment. Eli knows I won't want to be around him when he says he wants to punch me. So by isolating him in that situation I really am confirming his worst fears: that he is unlovable, or that I like him only when he's behaving appropriately, or that if he says the worst thing he can think of, I won't love him anymore.

(Aha! I am. The. Worst. Mom. In. The. World.)

I know I'm not the first mom whose kid has said something mean to her. I'm probably not even the first mom who's asked Google, "Is my toddler a sociopath?" Yesterday was the first time that I felt so frustrated and so demoralized that I wasn't even looking forward to going home after work. But when I got there, my stark-naked kid streaked out into the hallway and wrapped his arms around me.

"I'm not going to shoot you," said a muffled voice into my thighs. "I love you."

When Eli was a little younger and he used to cry about going to daycare, I'd sing him a little song to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell": "I love you all the time, I love you all the time, even when I'm not with you I love you all the time."

The other day, after Eli told me he wanted to kick me and then upped his game by actually trying to kick me, I had my first opportunity to practice what Aha! Parenting preaches. I mustered up all my zen and took a deep breath.

"I know you're so mad that you're feeling like you want to kick me," I said through gritted teeth, "and it's OK to be mad, but it's not OK to kick me."

Deflated, he fell back against the couch and dissolved into wails.

"I love you," I said softly. "I love you all the time."

Let that be my mantra for the days and years ahead: I love you all the time. Even when I want you to get dressed and you put your underwear on your head. Even when you wake me up at 5 a.m. by leaning over my face and loudly requesting a chocolate sandwich and milk. Even when you say you want to shoot me or, God forbid, you learn crueler insults to fling at me. I love you all the time.

It's a hard-knock life

One of my favorite memories from childhood is also one of the oddest, if only because it seems so random. I was 8 or 9 years old and I had been sick, so I was up very early in the morning — perhaps 4 a.m. It was still dark and my mother and I were watching I Love Lucy together on TV.

That's it. I've thought a lot about why this moment has stuck in my memory when I can barely remember anything about our family trip to Disney World or most of high school. I think what it comes down to is less the memory itself than the feeling — the feeling of being safe and warm and well taken care of.

When I was a kid, my mom always took amazing care of me when I was sick. She'd make me chicken soup and hot tea, diligently record my temperature and medications and let me watch Annie a hundred times in a row. She'd give me apple juice to drink and make sure my pajamas were warm and clean. And — of this she's particularly proud — she always changed my sheets so I'd have nice fresh sheets to sleep on instead of germy ones.

My mom always was and continues to be an expert at Jewish mother guilt and can always find a new way to say "I told you so," but when I was sick I never felt that she was annoyed or impatient with me. It was like all her energy was concentrated on making me feel better. And it usually worked.

There are a million ways my mom and I are different, as people and as mothers. But when Eli is sick, it's my mom I try to emulate. Last week, when he was laid flat by a raging ear infection, I even found myself calling him "sweetheart" — which isn't something I don't think I've ever called him before, because it was my mom's nickname for me.

Of course, with Eli sleeping in my bed and coughing all over my pillow, he was generous enough with his germs that I soon found myself with a raging sinus infection of my own. (Note to Mom: Of course, I changed Eli's germy sheets — but not mine!) I don't know if other moms feel this way, but to me there is nothing more pitiful than being sick as a grown woman with a child, a dog, a job and other responsibilities.

I want someone to change my sheets, I thought miserably. I want someone to make me chicken soup and put on Annie. Not the remake, either — the original with Carol Burnett.

There are some things I appreciate about being a grownup. Whenever I'm in a bulk candy store and some mom is telling her whiny kids they can't have any more candy while I'm gleefully shoveling more into my bag, for instance, or turning up the space heater in my office really high, or even when I go out with friends after dark and I decide to wear my glasses instead of my contacts because I'm grownup enough that I no longer give a fig about trying to look cute. (Yes, I said "give a fig.")

But as much as I felt like a grownup taking care of my son the way my mom took care of me, when I was sick I just felt like I was 9 again.

Sometime last week Eli announced joyfully, "You're my best friend!" But then, he continued mournfully, "But when I'm big, I won't see you anymore. Because I have to go to big kid school."

"Who do you think will take you to the big kid school?" I asked, pointing at myself. He shook his head.

"I have to go by myself!" he declared.

That's how I feel, some days: like I still need my mom, but I have to go by myself.

(Fortunately my mom lives three blocks away. And sent over chicken soup. And at least I have Phil to entertain Eli and walk the dog and get me apple juice and Afrin. But alas, no surviving copy of Annie.)