Money-Making Schemes Skip a Generation

My son got in the car after after school the other day awash with enthusiasm. He talked over his sister to say, “Hey mom, can we do an experiment when we get home?” I thought of our playroom shelves lined with experiment kits--food tests, pop bottle activities, chemistry sets, snap circuits, etc. Just as I started to smile at the idea of cracking the seal on some of these gifts, he added, “And I don’t mean with the kits.” Sigh.

What he proposed, instead, was that we just run right home and create, in his words, “a healing potion.” “Let’s mix some things together and keep trying them on my scratch until it disappears then we can sell our potion for, like, a lot of money.” He wanted to be rich by bedtime. I tried not to take a needle to his balloon but explained, in gentle terms, that we are not chemists. I told him that mixing random ingredients together then applying them to skin are more likely to create injuries than to cure them. He sighed at his defeated prospects and my lack of vision.

I’m a realist--the worst person to run your business plan by; I will point out its flaws and defeat your eager demeanor. I do try to temper my cynical tendencies when it comes to my children. Sometimes it’s a challenge, especially with my son. He’s the type of kid who proposes new rules to well-established board games and is eternally disappointed in me for following a recipe even when the dish is delicious. I think things are fine the way they are; he hates convention. His mind is alway working--I can almost smell the smoke. This past year, I’ve seen him become fixated on novel ways to make money. Every week, a new idea.

While I have some parental pride at his creativity and confidence, his zeal dredges my childhood in an unhappy way. My dad was a wheeler-dealer and a dream chaser. He never met a product he he couldn’t sell; well, for a little while, until he got bored or dissatisfied with the cash flow and moved on.

Dad was married four times but his true love was multi-level marketing companies. You know, those organizations where you sign up then immediately recruit twelve of your friends who enlist their friends and so on until you have a teetering pyramid of naive hopefuls. My father got his pals (and my friends’ parents and my teachers) to invest their savings in: soaps and shampoos, weight loss shakes, legal insurance, milk-culture cosmetics, ionic air cleaners, anti-aging vitamins, and Viagra for women.

I have a vivid memory of coming in after school one day to find a giant metal tube with a swinging door dominating the space where our couch had been. It looked like a time machine; Dad informed me that it was an upright tanning machine and that he was thinking of selling them. We lived in Florida. Also known as the “sunshine state” where tans could be had daily for free.

Dad insisted I “take a tan.” I put on my swimsuit, affixed small guards over my eyes, and stepped blindly into the machine. The door closed and I startled when suddenly the floor began to move beneath me. I peeked and saw a circle of lights around me as I rotated. Around and around I went, getting hotter and hotter. I was being cooked like a pig on a spit. Afterwards, my skin sported a flush and a clinging burnt toast smell.

Because of my father’s cockamamie schemes, my son’s ideas create a pavlovian response in me to counter them. I am a cons lister. But my son keeps trying. By the time we pulled into the driveway that day after school, he had already abandoned his healing potion plan and had a new one--to create a DNA home testing kit. Before I could question what he was hoping to discover with said DNA test--ancestry? paternity? who stole the last cookie?--he was on to the next. That’s the thing about both my son and my dad, they lose interest fast.

The list of my son’s ideas is endless: selling hand-drawn comic books at a street fair booth (abandoned after he crafted one comic); sports cards collecting and reselling (stopped when he realized he might have to actually do research to not get suckered); garage cleaning service (shut down when I suggested that he clean ours first).

My son and his pal have hatched an idea for a business they’ve named “TEV.” Their plan involves going door to door collecting video games that kids have outgrown then selling them on EBay to garner a tidy profit. So far, they’ve culled a total of 4 games--two from each of their own homes.  

My son isn’t content to up his own profit-making, he wants to monetize me too. He wants me to charge for my blog; sell the goodies I bake; write a kids book and get it on out to a publisher while he’s at school today. Recently he decided that if I’m too lame to exploit my own skillset, then he will--he planned a bake sale.

As a lemonade stand veteran, I’ve learned this: charge overhead. In the past I’ve spent mornings mixing lemonade, dragging tables, and buying paper goods all for the kids to swoop in and get bored within 10 minutes. Now I charge for time and supplies and they take the whole venture more seriously. They assess foot traffic and weather. They hold signs and accost passing cars. This past summer, a car pulled up and the man driving said, “My daughter insisted we come. She said your son made everyone on the camp bus promise.” We sold out.

It’s spring but we haven’t had a sure-footed warm or sunny day since last summer. Finally the sun peeks through the clouds for a few glorious hours and we start a batch of my favorite sea salt chocolate chip cookies (delicious recipe below) and everyone else’s favorite gooey toffee butter cake. My children have their friends over and they roam in and out of the kitchen to “help.” They set up a table and create an overly-optimistic pricing structure: $4 per treat and $7 for two. I talk them down.

The sidewalk is empty of passers-by so, taking a cue from my son, I send a text to everyone I know in Glencoe. People start arriving on foot from neighboring houses and by car. Girls from down the street bring paper and pens to make more signs. My son pays them. Another boy yells from the curb at cars. My son pays him. One dad comments that since his son helped make the cookies that he should get paid too. Pretty soon every kid handing over a few bucks to buy a sweet is getting a percentage of it back. It’s backroom capitalism in action--everyone’s on the take.

I’m fond of saying that I like the idea of happy chaos but sometimes a lot of kids in one place can just feel like chaos--skip the happy. Not this. It’s bedlam sure, but I love it. There are little girls riding scooters up and down the driveway; dads with arms crossed talking about basketball; boys counting money and conferring; older girls doing cheers on the lawn; and moms asking for the recipes. My son’s money-making scheme lined his pockets and brought a bunch of people together on a random Saturday. I take note to remember this when he makes his next pitch.   

 

I don’t have to wait long. His most recent brainstorm involves charging Six Flags for roller coaster ideas. He says, “Do you think I could call the head of Six Flags and offer to work for him for $10 a week? I’ll give him one coaster idea per week. I already have one called ‘The Energizer.’” I peer at him in rearview mirror and think about how he really doesn’t have any idea how the world works. Good for him. He’s not limited by past failures, not hampered by common sense, not inhibited by wisdom. His whole world is opportunity and ideas. One of these days he’ll have a great one--hopefully it won’t involve tanning machines.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt

from Moms Big Book of Cookies

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

2 tbl Maldon Sea Salt or other best quality sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium-size mixing bowl. Cream the cooled melted butter and sugars together in a large mixing bowl with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Stir in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips. Place the bowl in the refrigerator for 10 minutes (or up to 6 hours) to let the dough firm up.

Drop the dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. (Balls of dough may be placed next to each other on parchment paper-lined baking sheets, frozen, transferred to zipper-lock plastic freezer bags, and stored in the freezer for up to one month. Frozen cookies may be placed in the oven directly from the freezer and baked as directed.) Sprinkle each cookie with 1/8 tsp sea salt.

Bake the cookies until golden around the edges but still soft on top, 9 to 11 minutes (a minute or two longer for frozen dough). Let the cookies stand on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then remove them with a metal spatula to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies will keep at room temperature in an airtight container for 2-3 days.

Pretending to be Italian

When my parents--20 years apart in age--were married, my dad asked my mom to promise one thing: no children. At thirty-nine, Dad had already raised three sons with his first wife and was done. My mom, a nineteen-year-old fresh from a small West Virginia mining town making her way in the big city of Richmond, happily agreed. 

I was two weeks old when they adopted me.

Over time, the fact that I’m adopted has faded into the background music of my life--the song is there but I mostly tune it out. This month has caused it to swell to full refrain, a volume 11. At my daughter’s school, the social/emotional learning theme for the month is “honoring our past.” Meanwhile, my son comes home with a fill-in-the-blanks form about the lineage of his parents and grandparents. Both are filled with questions about their heritage. I shirk their inquiries by saying simply, “Call your grandma.”

When they get off the phone with my mom, they are filled with exciting lineage tidbits. We’re Scottish! We’re English! We’re related to Daniel Boone! Oh, and who’s Daniel Boone?! They eagerly look up their new homelands on a map and I feel nothing.

Because I’m adopted I don’t know if I’m Scottish or English and I’m pretty sure Daniel Boone’s blood does not throb through my veins. By extension, all of this is true of for my children too. And though they know about my adoption and understand what it means for me, they don’t connect it at all to their own genetic backgrounds. They are content in their own histories--a confidence that has clearly skipped a generation.

The mother and father who raised me are my only parents. I don’t long for the mother who gave me up. As far as extended family goes, I’ve had off and on relationships with my much older half-brothers; I have an aunt and an uncle that I enjoy at the holidays, a few nephews, and a beloved grandma who passed away. That’s it. In my view, my family stretches only a generation or two. I didn’t know and love those who came before therefore I’m not really related to them.

At temple my daughter recently had to construct a family tree. She put me on one side and her dad on the other. His half was leafy and full, a shady wonderland. My side looked like dutch elm disease had struck. I helped my daughter add extra names of people she’s never met, just so the tree wouldn’t lean to one side.

Everything about my identity is co-opted. I’m Southern because my adoptive mom and dad grew up in West Virginia and Virginia respectively. I’m Jewish because I practice it for my husband and children though I’ve never converted. My maiden name was on loan from my adoptive parents while my current one is borrowed from my husband. I have an unsettling sense of free-floating. None of it feels like it’s mine. I lack many of the labels we use to define ourselves.

It's especially difficult to not have a traceable history in a place like Glencoe. Many of the people here are like boomerangs--they grew up here, left for college and explored life elsewhere for a bit then turned around and headed right back. A quick list of 20 Glencoe women I know well, yields 12 who grew up on the north shore, 6 more from the midwest, and only two who moved here from somewhere else entirely. As an outsider, I envy the sense of continuation they’re offering their children even though it’s something they likely seldom think about. For most, geography ceases to matter as a defining characteristic but it’s all I’ve got.

I spent 16 of my first 25 years in Florida so the only identifier I can rightly claim is that I am a Floridian. Yet, Florida itself is ill-defined. It’s not “the east,” though it’s boasts a large eastern coast. It’s not “the south,” though it’s holds our nation’s most southernmost point. So what image does “Floridian” even conjure? The state is host to so many Northern transplants that it possesses no culture of its own. If you’re seeking an identity to cling to, the sunshine state offers no warm assurances.

My husband and I went to Italy on our honeymoon and I fell in love--with the place. I proclaimed it my homeland (I might have been tipsy on grappa at the time). It’s possible, I reasoned--I have dark hair and dark eyes, though my husband has refuted my claim to olive skin. And I love Italian wine and food. For lack of a verifiable cultural heritage, I’ve decided to adapt a culinary one.

This month, in honor of my psuedo-Italian status, I decide to make one of my favorite desserts: tiramisu. Tiramisu is not for the calorie-counter or the gooey-sweet lover; it’s taste is decadent and understated at the same time. It’s caffeinated and boozy--a little like me. It is also not a dessert for the impulsive as it has to sit for several hours so the flavors of espresso, brandy, mascarpone cheese, and whipped yolks can sink into the delicate ladyfingers (a creepy name for something edible).

I allow mine to soak overnight then have it for breakfast with tea. And for lunch. Oh, and as an afternoon snack. By the time I attend my writing group that evening, I’ve had four delicious pieces and am a little ill. I bring the leftovers to share and end up eating a fifth piece. If I’m going to be Italian, I need to learn a little willpower or I won’t have room for the pasta. My kids have no such problem; they try one tiramisu bite each then outdo each other with descriptors: yuck, blech, terrible, gross.

When it came to having children, I eagerly anticipated finally knowing someone who resembled me. I pined for a mini-me--a brown-haired, dark-eyed, round-faced baby. Instead, my son was born my husband’s doppelganger, who in turn is already his own father’s twin who happens to resemble his father. Pre-marriage I should have bolted after seeing photos of the trio lined up looking like versions of the same person at different ages. I never had a chance--those Rothbard genes barrel through anything in their way.

When I discovered that my second child was to be a girl, I had some anxiety about my sweet little daughter looking like her father. Sure, he’s handsome--but a female version? I imagined some half-monkey baby with a pink bow in her abundant hair. Upon birth, she looked like an old man, yes, but not like her father; she was a baby Harrison Ford in his Blade Runner days complete with a dark pointed hairline and sour expression. But within months she grew into her Rothbard looks. Even now, every time someone remarks about how our kids favor my husband, it’s a dagger to me. I do realize that my children are me in lots of ways from their interests to their personalities, but it would thrill me to have a stranger remark, “You’re daughter looks just like you,” rather than, “Are you the nanny?” This small thing I was hoping would connect me--a resemblance--didn’t come to pass.      

Though I can’t make my children look like me, there are other ways I could nail down an identity. I could mount a birth parent search or petition to have my health records released. I could get a cheek swab to determine my maternal side ancestral origin. I could commit to a religion via conversion. I haven’t done any of these because though there’s unease in the unknown, there’s also freedom. I’m loathe to commit. Each choice narrows our path. Right now I can be whomever I want to be. Next, I think I’ll be Buddhist or maybe Greek. I do so love baklava.

Shortbread Cookies are Not for Kids

Despite it’s current romantic incarnation, Valentines Day began as a religious holiday. It was cause for a big feast celebrating the life of Saint Valentine. Like most major holidays--at least in America--it has slowly been eroded by consumerism. Now it’s mostly a boon to the to the chocolatier, the restaurateur and Charles R. Walgreen. Yet the high school me used to delight in the day.

Oviedo High’s enterprising student council concocted the brilliant plan of selling single roses on Valentines Day. Better yet, they delivered them during class and one-by-one. So each time Mrs. Michaud would lift her hand to write on the board, there’d be a knock, then a twitter of excitement when a council member walked in bearing a rose. Who was it for? Who was it from? Then just as we’d quiet down, there’d be another knock. Between classes, there was the attending cacophony of female chatter about their own roses and about all of the others that had been delivered. Now, that kind of thing would be instantly transmitted via facebook, twitter, instagram, google+ circles, and others that I am too old to know about.

But back then, when we were still passing notes in class and eagerly awaiting yearbook inscriptions to see how boys felt about us, the public nature of the rose delivery was a thrill. With no status to update online, this was as close as we got to announcing new, young love. By my senior year, tribes of girls had also started sending roses to each other so that by the end of the day, everyone had nearly full bouquets sticking out of their backpacks--a declaration of popularity among friends as well as desirability to the opposite sex. The roses could represent anything from friendship to a tentative romantic first step to the marking of territory. That last year of high school I received roses from: Dana, Katie, Gray, Tisha, Katrina, Kristin, Dave, Russ, Chris, and one anonymous sender (if you read my last post about my propensity for recording things, you’ll know this is accurate). It was exciting.

Post high school, on Valentines Day, I’d get a card or chocolate or flowers from whomever was my current flame. We’d go to dinner or a movie or both. It was nice but predictable. When I met my husband, he announced (six months in) that he didn’t “believe” in the holiday. What he said: if I’m doing my job as a boyfriend/husband for the rest of the year, and being romantic, considerate, and spontaneous, then I don't need to conform like all the other schmucks out there and I would rather buy you something you love when you don't expect it than red roses when you do. What I heard: I am cheap.

I have to hand it to him, though, he has put his (romantic) money where his mouth is: presenting me with jewelry for no reason; hiring a courier to stand in the never ending line at Garrett’s popcorn then deliver it to me when I was pregnant and craving and he was out of the country; and spontaneously putting our wedding song on and dancing with me in our kitchen. He’s right, he doesn’t need Valentines Day.

But I’ll admit that, over the years, there was still some part of me that mourned a little when the day slipped by unnoticed--or rather, willfully ignored. I’m far too pragmatic to be happy about a presentation of flowers that cost double their value and I’m uninterested in jockeying others for a restaurant table on the busiest day of the year. So what kind of Valentines Day would meet my  fickle needs? Enter my son.

When my son was five, he asked what his daddy and I were going to do for Valentines Day as he carefully printed his name on valentines for his classmates. As I tried to explain that we didn’t really celebrate that way, he looked up at me with his big, innocent blue eyes until I finally just said, “I need a Valentine, wanna be mine?” He said “yes” and immediately began talking about how we could spend the day. Now, four years in, he begins plotting it months in advance.

As is always the way with children--well, with my children--a sweet, small idea quickly becomes overblown. If I say to my son on a random Saturday that I’d like to spend a little time with him and that we should walk to Starbucks for a doughnut, he immediately begins wondering aloud what time Six Flags opens.  Each year, we spend forever going back and forth on our Valentines Day plans. His typical proposal involves starting the day with breakfast out then some sort of activity like ice skating at Millennium Park then lunch out then maybe a movie or a museum or a quick plane trip somewhere before rounding the day out with dinner someplace special like Rainforest Cafe.

Inevitably, I find myself in the position of reeling him in. By the time we start our outing, he’s disappointed in its small scale (and its lack of talking animals) and I’m exhausted from our negotiation; it can leave me feeling like a failure before we even start. I remind myself that the day is all about the tradition we’ve started and the time we get to spend together. When I mention this to my son, he helpfully suggests that he could stay home from school on Valentines Day so that we’d have even more quality time. Thus putting me in the position yet again to have to say “no.” Sigh.

Despite the frustrations that go into its planning, we always end up doing things we wouldn’t have without the set-aside time the holiday affords. We’ve attended the New Year’s parade in Chinatown (and inadvertently marched in it), battled each other in laser tag, and spent an afternoon in an arcade. This year, we went to the Legoland Discovery Center and raced our homemade lego cars against each other and attended a workshop on building a T-rex.

Through it all, we talked (and trash-talked, when it came to the lego car race). I learned about his crushes, the plot of a story he’s planning on writing, and why he sleeps so close to the edge of the bed. The number of times he said “Thank you” and “I love you” that afternoon are far too many to count.

I realize that our tradition is fleeting. That his ever-changing list of crushes will, in a few years, result in a real, live girlfriend. He’ll be too cool for legos and laser tag and long dinners with his mom. I spend much of my time as a parent reminding myself--with relief and despair--that he won’t be this age forever. And then my Valentines Day will change again as it has from young love to married love to parental love. I wonder what will be next?

As is also the way with my children, they seem to have some delicate scale they weigh time on. As in who gets more with me. The whole Valentines Day venture--and the seemingly millions of conversations about it with my son--doesn't sit well with my daughter. She suggested that she could be my valentine next year to which my son replied, eyebrows raised to indicate her naivete, “Um, you are not a boy.” My daughter told him, “So what, girls can marry girls!”

As a consolation prize, I baked heart-shaped shortbread cookies with my daughter on the actual holiday. The cookies are a Barefoot Contessa recipe and, in general, I think you can’t go wrong with her. The mistake I made was assuming that kids might like shortbread cookies. They are neither gooey nor sweet enough to satisfy the under-20 set. To quote my son: “Eh, they’re not your best.” I found them yummy with tea, but even I can’t eat 30 shortbread cookies. But perhaps with baking a Valentines dessert together, my daughter and I have started our own tradition.

I find it important to mention that, now that we have a daughter, my husband has reformed his view of the holiday. He took her out to the dinner his belief system wouldn’t allow him to take me to. He made our daughter smile this year with a single red rose. He made me smile this year when he told me that he got the rose free at the dentist that morning. Some things never change.  

Flour on a New Floor

To say that I am organized is an understatement. Neurotic might hew closer to the truth. I was the only twelve year old I knew with files. My cassettes were alphabetized; my stuffed animals ordered by size.

On a recent trip to my mom’s, I gave my son a box of dog-eared comic books that had been mine at his age. He dug in. A few days later, he presented me with an index card listing the comic titles, condition, and expected value of each. Oh no, collecting and cataloging like his mom? Poor thing. But upon closer exam, I discovered the handwriting to be my own overly-neat first tries at cursive. It was I who had listed Mighty Mouse #169, Sept 79, $2.50-6.00, perfect and Richie Rich #92, $1.50, less perfect.

My father was the master “organizer”--as in he spent hours shuffling and re-shuffling papers, typing folder labels and making logs of activities. I can see him so clearly, hair sprayed into neatly combed tracks, licking the pad of his thumb and leaning his sweatered paunch over a tall stack of papers, a look of determination on his face. He sorted things in lieu of making an actual living. Always appearing busy but actually getting very little done. I vowed to not be like him.

But, like radiation, my early exposure to obsessive organizing has left some lasting effects. My husband and I have a recurring argument wherein he tries to organize our spices by “frequency of use” rather than by name. His argument? Pepper should be handier than marjoram. My argument? Yes, but “M” comes before “P”--as I elbow him out and reshuffle the cabinet.

My mom is fond of saying that I’ve always needed “my ducks in a row.” It’s a great image, all of the facets of my life as little happy fuzzy ducklings lined up neatly and marching behind me wherever I go. But more often than not they are straying off to play video games or crying about the knots in their hair and leaving a trail of dirty, inside-out clothes behind them.

The truth is more complicated than my need to have pencils separate from pens; it’s my craving for stability. Yes, I like the simple pleasure of knowing where to find things and of a clean room and of an up-to-date calendar with everyone accounted for. They all put my mind at ease. But my underlying need is routine and knowing what’s next--the things I lacked in childhood. I go overboard trying to create them now.

Friends are always surprised to discover how deeply these desires run and how ridiculously important order is to me. They seem at odds with the parts of me they know well. I happily dance in the living room with my kids, trash talk their friends during board games, stay latest at a party, whip up impromptu playdate cookies and engage in nerf gun wars. I maintain that these free sides of my personality can flourish only because the other areas of my life are so controlled.

But what happens if those areas of order collapse? What if my metaphorical ducks just up and leave the building? This fall, all of my efforts at creating predictability were crushed under the heel of some big changes. Our home went under construction; our missing kitchen left my blog on hold because of the lack of baking to write about; my husband accepted a new job entailing longs hours and lots of travel; and I spent almost three months really sick.  

At first, it all felt like freedom. Eating out every night. Not having to write. My husband out, opening up quiet evenings for my own reading and writing. Even bedrest offered its own exemption from the day to day drudgery.

It didn’t take long to tire of Subway (one visit) and Potbelly’s (more); and having my home filled with people who called me “Mrs. Rothbard;” and of doctor visits and prescription refills and testing; and of being a single parent. Surprisingly, the thing that might have affected me the most was my hiatus from writing. I used to always joke that I didn’t know what I was thinking until I wrote about it; it turns out that it’s true. I began to feel totally out of touch with myself which caused me to pull away from family and friends.

At one point a friend dragged me to lunch “to talk.” She’s a therapist who also does volunteer work for a charity called, “A Home Within” that seeks to help foster kids learn to rely on their own inner strength through their ever-changing situations. As we’re talking, she invokes that language to remind me that, despite my morphing environment, I need to find my “home within.” I say, “Yeah, I think it’s my kitchen.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand and says with all seriousness, “I think we need to be a little less literal.” We both start laughing and it feels great--a bright spot. It’s the first step back to my lost light-heartedness.

Next, I know I need to write. In general, my ducks have to be in lockstep for me to compose a single sentence. You will never find my home cleaner than before a deadline. I will paint a room and upload thousands of photos that have lived on the camera for months, all in the name of preparing to write. Now, sitting down amid the chaos, I flounder. The words don’t come.

After almost four months, the workers trickle out and the kitchen is done. But I feel disdain for our new space as it reminds me of upheaval--like the pang of hearing the song that was playing when you broke up with your first love. My infatuation with the kitchen is over. Who was the girl who used to bake then jot down thoughts about food and life, puzzling through her own anxieties and desires? I don’t know her anymore.

As the rush of the holidays takes over, I push away thoughts about baking and writing and focus instead on getting through the season. By rote, I order gifts and attend parties and pack for our trips. Then comes the first night of Chanukah. I haven’t made a challah, or even dinner. We light candles hurriedly and without feeling, another thing to check off the list before the quickly-approaching bedtime. Gifts are doled out.

After opening his present, my son says, “Wait right here Mom,” and disappears upstairs. He comes back holding a very clearly wrapped-by-him gift and hands it to me proudly. Before I can even open it, he gushes in his eagerness, “I hope you like it! I picked it out and ordered it myself and made sure you didn’t get the mail when it came and wrapped it up and paid for it out of my own allowance money.”

I unwrap it to find a cake decorating set. He has hand-picked fifty-three pieces of Wilton magic, “the perfect foundation for any decorator.” I realize then that even though my perception has been skewed lately, to my son I’m still the same. He looks at me, happy and expectant, and asks if I can decorate a cake right now.

Eight o’clock on a Sunday night and I’m running to the store for cake mix (blech) and canned icing (double blech) because I haven’t even bothered to unpack my baking stuff yet. By the time I’m actually decorating the resulting cupcakes, it’s almost ten and my son is there asking me to try a ribbon, a leaf, a basket weave. We are working together in the new kitchen. It’s a joy. I’m touched by my son’s forethought, his consideration, the generosity of this gift.

In all of the disruption, I somehow overlooked that my constants were there all along. I’ve worked so hard to give my kids the stability I lacked as a child without realizing that that’s what they offer me. How can I not write about that?