My mother died nine years ago today.

I’m not trying to be maudlin; that’s just how it is and what can you do about that? Some sentences are like that, especially when they push against the swelling wave of all the Mother’s Day messaging that starts rolling towards shore this time of year, crashing into me the second Sunday of each May and leaving me soaked in some unpalatable mixture of longing and resentment.

Each Mother’s Day, the fact that I myself am a mother, that Rowan and Isaac are going to bring home some kind of sweetly crafted double–Mother’s Day gifts, feels like an afterthought: that’s nice, dear, but where do I send my card?

Okay, that last sentence was maudlin.

But that first sentence: “My mother died nine years ago today.” It has two parts, and I am pondering the difficulties of both: the simple modifier-subject-verb of the first half and the descriptive clause (is that what we call that? I’m supposed to know those things, but today I’m not looking anything up. And is “modifier” correct?) of the second half. “Nine years ago” is just as unbelievable as the fact that she actually died — how is it that she’s been gone for nearly a quarter of my life? And yet, she shapes it, informs it, almost daily, and the memories and emotions are as clear now as they were then, unless I’m fooling myself into thinking otherwise. Am I?

That’s the most difficult thing about death — what I know today about the past nine years and what my mother doesn’t, can’t. Those two boys, of course, but all the tiny, daily things that make up a life, like what we’re having for dinner and that the roof is still leaking. I imagine daily phone calls in which we discuss these things; I imagine seeing her name pop up on the call display and sighing because I have things to do besides talk; I imagine picking up the phone anyway, every day. I console myself with the ways in which she does shape my life. I talked about it with a friend in Los Angeles last week, as she and I made up the guest bed in her home for me. “Really,” I kept protesting, “you don’t have to help. I can do this by myself.”

“Nah,” she said, stuffing a pillow into its case, “I can’t let go of the way my mother raised me.”

And we talked about that, the ways in which neither of us believe in ghosts but feel our mothers’ presence all around, live our lives according to (occasionally, or often, in defiance of) the way they would have, but always with them around us.

So she’s gone, has been for nine years now. But she’s here, too, so today, Sunday, every day, we’ll focus on that.

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Yesterday, I performed one of the boringest tasks known to the millennial generation: I switched e-mail accounts. The process involved tracking down and updating every last one of the jillion or so sites (and I’m sure I’ve forgotten many) and businesses and organizations that somehow rely on contacting me via e-mail, as well as messaging every single contact in my address book to let them know about the change.

Tedious as it is, it’s a useful process, every so often, to go through your contacts and see who’s actually still there, which of those whimsical Hotmail and Gmail addresses still works, which contacts haven’t yet expired, which people I want to hear from and those I imagine I’ll never talk to again. A couple of dozen dead e-mail addresses bounced back to me and I — diligent girl that I am — deleted them from my contact files, along with names I no longer recognized.

And then I did something simultaneously tiny and enormous.

I deleted my mother.

For close to nine years, I’ve kept her in my Outlook contacts, importing her information from system to system along with everyone else’s: the street address of the house she died in; the long-cancelled phone number; the e-mail address she never used but that my father set up for her because he was tired of her using his account; information about her spouse, now remarried. I’d go to look up another Goldberg and there she would be, her name popping up always a slight jab to my gut, a tiny twisting in my soul. Like when, several months after she died, I had a roll of film developed (was it really such a short time ago that we developed film?) and when I opened the envelope of photographs, there she was like a ghost staring back at me and I couldn’t breathe.

I’m mixed about this. On the one hand, who needs the reminder of heartbreak? Like the semi-conciliatory phone message from my high school boyfriend that I never erased from my answering machine (remember answering machines?), just flipping the cassette to the other side: why? On the other hand, it’s a big step, or at least it’s a step that feels significant: to hit “delete” on the name of the person you miss most in the world, whose name popping up today in my inbox or on my caller ID would be the most welcome of everyday miracles.

I made the call, in the end, on the basis of futility: keeping her in my contact list will never provide me with closure, let alone contact. Keeping her there isn’t so much a form of respect as it is desperation or denial. Much better to wear her rings so that part of her is with me constantly. Much better to pull out a picture and show her to my kids, write another story and say her name out loud: Ruth Laine Goldberg, I have a new e-mail address. You’ll never use it, but I know that we both would have wished that otherwise.

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Hook as question mark. Neat.

* * *

Well, hello there Friday. Crazy how you snuck up on me like that: so far off in the distance on Monday and then — wham! — you’re here, and if I blink you’ll be gone and with you an entire week’s worth of not blogging. So here we go.

What have I been doing? In part, it’s been one of those weeks where I have a million different beginnings and no clear endings, and so the idea of teasing through, say, my complicated feelings around Yom Kippur and fasting (or not) and taking children to synagogue, or how this all relates to the/my creative process, seem overwhelming. So, in lieu of a post addressing these kinds of Big Questions, I thought I would share with you some of the Big Questions that have been asked of me in the past 24 hours. To wit:

• If you die, to make us feel better, can we have your iPod and your iPhone?
• What do you care about more: day care or a dead person?
• Will you do lots of fun stuff after I die? Or will you be too sad?
• Can we all be buried in the same place?
• Do all pirates have the hook? Or just the captains? Where do they get the hooks, anyway? The pirate store or something?

(One of these things is not like the other…)

For the record, no one around here is mortally ill (ptu, ptu). Just processing, in the way that my children love to process, on and on, about The Death. And pirates. The answers aren’t, obviously, straightforward: in every question there are about six different assumptions that have to be addressed. Like, not everyone is buried when they die and even though we technically all could be buried in the same place the reality is that probably we won’t be, partly because of cremation and also people grow up and move around even though you think you’ll live in this house forever you might not, and you can’t really compare day care and a dead person but let’s just get your seatbelt buckled up and get to day care for right now, and sure, really, if I die you can play on my iPhone (assuming you know the passcode) and let’s not even think about me living after you die because I plan for that to happen the other way around but just in case, no, it would be quite difficult to have fun, say, in the years immediately …

And no, definitively, there is no pirate store.

Have a good weekend.

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Once, there was a boy.

And the boy loved an egg very much.

Nobody knew that he loved the egg, though. And this was hardly surprising, because when the mother responsible for making his lunch hard-boiled the egg and peeled it and put it in his lunch, he ignored it outright. And then, when she, ever hopeful, later that evening put the ignored egg on the dining room table — nay, directly on the boy’s dinner plate — the boy very firmly took the egg off his dinner plate and explained, in no uncertain terms, that he did not want the egg. Oh fickle heart.

Because the boy, in fact, DID love the egg. In fact, he loved the egg and only that egg more than anything in the world and knew utterly that, without the egg, he would be doomed to a life of misery and despair and unending want.

He knew all these things at the precise moment that his younger brother picked up the discarded egg from the table and took a bite out of it.

And, oh: the PASSION. Oh, the FURY. Oh, the utter VEHEMENCE with which the boy defended his rapidly disappearing egg. “It was my egg, my egg,” he wailed, “my only, only egg, my favourite egg, the only egg I wanted. My egg. My eeeeegggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHH!”

The brother, meanwhile, had crawled into the boy’s other mother’s lap and happily — if not entirely innocently — popped the last bite of egg into his mouth, which ratcheted the boy’s histrionics to new heights. The boy suggested, passionately, furiously, vehemently, that the egg would now have to be surgically extracted from his brother’s stomach, and that perhaps a butter knife might be an appropriate implement with which to perform this task.

His mothers suggested that they disagreed with this suggestion. In fact, they suggested many things, but all their suggestions were handily dismissed. The situation continued for quite some time until one mother or the other suggested that the point of “enough” had been reached. The boy disagreed, but the mothers prevailed, and peace was once again restored to the household. More or less.

The end.

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So have I told you about my seventh birthday party? Which happened to coincide with a blizzard and so nobody came? (You’ll note the cause-and-effect relationship there; it’s not like there was a blizzard AND no one came. There was a blizzard SO no one came and it had nothing to do with me. Right?

But still, it felt a little as though it had something to do with me.

In other words, I have a wee bit of baggage here.)

So, fast-forward 33-odd years later and consider: What if I held a blog giveaway, and no one approximately nine people out of THE ENTIRE INTERWEBS showed up? (Don’t get me wrong: You nine are lovely, lovely people and this in no way reflects my great pleasure that you did show up.) But, I mean, just last week,The Bloggess offered to give away a metal chicken and 4582 people competed for the chance to win it. I realize I am not The Bloggess, but, this is a FREE MAGAZINE, PEOPLE. I will send it to your house and you do not have to pay for it. And I promise I won’t show up at your door (unless we’ve pre-cleared that and you live locally or somewhere really warm).

Perhaps a copy of Lilith magazine is slightly more niche-oriented than, say, a metal chicken? Perhaps. But, really, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it. Or even a feminist.

(Okay, you probably do need to be at least a little bit of a feminist. But I’m kind of assuming that if you’re reading this you are. Unless you got here via searching for “pizza” or “sex maman.” In which case, hi! Want a magazine?)

Okay, so that’s my pathetic pitch. Make me happy. Click here, leave even the briefest of brief comments or just click that Facebook link over to the right (your right), and you’re entered!  Contest closes at midnight tonight . Odds are good — at least for now.

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Our friend is dying; a matter of days, her doctors say. Come soon – now – stay for just a few minutes. I tell this to the children, that our friend is dying, soon; tell Rachel as she walks in the door from some errand or other: don’t take off your coat, just go.

Isaac is already gathering up treasure, presents, pressing a silver filigree ring from one of his troves into her hands, asking to come with. Later, when it’s my turn to duck into our friend’s quiet room, I will see the ring on her bedside table. Not sure if she knows it’s there, but now Isaac does and that is important to him.

He’s on a mission the next morning, gathering, gathering, gathering shiny things in the house, layering them in boxes, insisting that we take them, take him, to see her. He doesn’t take no easily for an answer, this boy, asking again and again why he can’t go. He’ll be very quiet, he says. He won’t disturb her. He’s going to give her all his money, he says, all the money in his little jar marked “Isaac’s bank.” Then she can buy some food. He’ll take it to her. And we try to explain that what our friend needs right now is not money, or food. Just love. And care. Then I’ll give the money to the doctors, he says, dogged. To use to help her, the morning a chorus of refrains of why and why and why not.

I guess we won’t go on any more walks in the country with our friend, he says.

No, I guess we won’t.

Explaining all of these things to him is so layered, so exhausting: the etiquette of death and dying on top of hospitals on top of rite and ritual and finance and generosity. How do you encourage a four-year-old’s selflessness while also encouraging restraint? Which is it, then? We can’t just burst into her hospital room with boxes full of treasures and feather boas, and even as I’m trying to explain this, I’m thinking of our friend’s house, full of shiny rocks and sparkly things and pop-up books and photographs, her shy cat peeping out through the layers of wonder, her, smiling out from photographs on the fridge. And Isaac is right, it doesn’t make any sense that what she might now need is quiet, order. And I don’t want him to see her now, asleep, and slack-jawed, and to remember that image of her instead of the buoyant woman with a head full of hair, playing checkers on the floor with him and his brother.

How do you explain to him that his impulse to give, to want to do something, is precisely right — and yet, that doesn’t mean that he can take the two silver boxes off Rachel’s dresser and give them away? I mean, it sounds so petty, so selfish of me to say no (what kind of a douchebag are you? She’s dying.): of course I would hand them and more over in a heartbeat if it would make any difference, but it won’t and you can’t really give other people’s things away… the explanation, the logic of it, fizzle away in the face of the situation, my explanations as ridiculous as his questions: Can we put the money on her gravestone? (She’s not dead yet, Isaac, I want to say, but) No, we don’t put money on gravestones. Why? Well, because we… Well, then we can scatter it in the grass. Oh sweetie, that won’t help our friend. But let’s find sparkly rocks when the time comes. When the time is right, we’ll take some of the money from our house and give it in our friend’s honour to a place that will help to make sure that no one else…

And then I can’t finish the sentence. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because he’s already dumping out the change and the five-dollar bill from his bank and asking me to count it and I turn from the window, where I have been staring out at the snowy driveway, fighting tears, to tally up twelve dollars and nineteen cents.

Mama, you’re looking like you have a sad look on your face, Mama.

I do. I’m sad.

About our friend?

Yeah. Do you want to be sad together for a little while? Cuddle up on the couch and be sad together?

Okay.

[Beat.]

But can’t I go see her?

No.

Why not?

I don’t know.

* * *

In memory of HS. For GS & JB.

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So I just had to go and broadcast to the entire Interwebs about how Isaac was trotting off so happily to junior kindergarten and preschool. Just had to, didn’t I? And now God has smited me. Smote me? Watever. God is punishing me in the form of a four-year-old who has reverted to weeping and leg-clinging each school-day morning.

(My friend Vikki —whom, not coincidentally, I met on the Internet — says that God ignores the Internet, but we all know that that’s simply not true. God watches the Internet, all zillion pages of it, intensely, looking for reasons to smite people.  Because, of course, the Internet is pure evil. If you’re on the Internet right now, GET OFF. Your eternal salvation depends on it.)

(Still here? Don’t come crying to me when you get smoted.)

We don’t know why – my punitive God theory aside, of course – Isaac has so suddenly reverted, but it may also have to do with the fact that Rachel, hideously, had the nerve to go to a conference in Toronto the week before last, in the process utterly derailing Isaac’s life. Of course, we made the tactical error of telling him about her departure in the morning IMMEDIATELY BEFORE PRESCHOOL, thereby creating (or, perhaps, reactivating) a negative preschool association. Next time, assuming Rachel is ever allowed to leave town again, we’ll time that one a bit better.

The only upside to the situation is that Isaac has become slightly more enamoured of me. It’ll fade fast (GOD: See? I know.), but for the moment I’m soaking it up: the little boy who bounces, meowing, into the bedroom in the morning to climb in next to me: “Mama, can we still play the game where you’re the princess and I’m the kitten who hurt his foot? Because an evil wizard did a  magic spell on your knife and it cut me? And then it cut off all my fur so I’m cold?” The little boy who nestles into my lap while I write early in the morning, my arm snaking around him to reach the page, not minding the inconvenience, the loss of a few minutes’ sleep.

The teachers smile and gently take his hands as we peel him off us in the mornings. They’ve seen it before. He’s not the only one. (“Ah, JK mornings,” one of the teachers remarked to Rachel as she stood, surrounded by wailing kindergartners in the courtyard, “all those tears.”) We’ve seen it  before. But still, it smarts.

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Rowan doesn’t walk any more. He cycles, or he cartwheels, or he kicks a soccer ball, or he throws himself forward onto his hands and practices standing on them, over and over, for hours, while we watch. And count.

We have to watch. And we have to count. We can’t, say, sit on the couch in the basement and read the Sunday New York Times while he gymnasts away happily to himself. “Are you watching?” he asks after every turn. “Did you see that? Are you counting? Mom, can you please count? Mom, why are you reading?”

And so I remind myself that these moments will not last forever and that there will be a time in his life where the last thing he wants me to do is watch him, intently, and that the newspaper will wait while I count the microseconds — one-two-three-fourfivesixseven… — his legs hover in the air. “How many was that?” he asks, every time. He smiles, shy and pleased, every time we get above ten or so.

He’s improving, too. For a while, his legs hung crookedly akimbo in the air, but now they are straightening out, feet together. He figured out this development all on his own; hasn’t let me or Rachel spot him, doesn’t want any help. And frustrating as it has been to have to watch and not intervene, improve, correct (Just let me…) it’s been worth it to watch him figure it out all on his own, one foot kicking up and then the other and meeting in the space where his head should be instead.

But I watch also because I’m fascinated, and slightly stunned by, the way history repeats itself. I think back to my own childhood, and how Rowan could never have known about my own handstand practices in the front halls of our suburban homes, my father timing each one on the stopwatch function of his VERY EXCITING wristwatch, which also had a tiny calculator on it. “Why are you looking at me funny?” Rowan asked me as I watched him the first time he started upending himself on the much-too-small patch of carpet on the upstairs landing.

“Oh,” I said softly. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Because here is one of the scenes I wrote more than a decade ago for my novel — my novel, which now comprises 265 manuscript pages and counting:

K—  practices handstands in the front hall. Throwing her small body forward and down, she kicks her legs in the air and thinks, up. Stay up. Sometimes her legs don’t rise far enough into the air; sometimes she overestimates the force of her kicks and tumbles over, arcing her back and twisting sideways as she comes down, once landing in a perfect backbend surprising in its grace. But some of the handstands hold long enough for her to feel the shift in gravity from her feet to her hands, the momentary comfort of standing upside down, and when this happens, she begins to count.

One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, four-Mississippi, five-Mississippi … and down.

            One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, four-Miss— … and down.

            One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, four-Mississippi, five-Mississippi, six-Mississippi … and down.

            Over and over, as she imagines herself in the Olympics, handstand champion of the world. Announcers and spotlights pointing her out on the stadium floor, ribbons in her hair, a satin spandex leotard. They compare her to Nadia Comaneci, the first 10, the new standard for perfection, the world’s next, brilliant surprise — the next Nadia, they say. She can stay up forever, she can count to a hundred, she can walk around the world.

And down.

            She throws herself up again. Not hard enough. Up again. Better this time, but she wavers at the sticking point and comes down again, a small grunt of frustration escaping her set mouth. Up again. It takes, and she begins again.

One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi … and in between the numbers, in syncopation with the beats of counting, is another chant. Get to twenty and Mom won’t die. Four-Mississippi. Get to twenty and Mom won’t die. Five-Mississippi.

            She wavers.

            Get to ten and Mom won’t die.

            And down, twisting legs over hips and landing, head pounding. Every chance is the last chance. Every fall, she grants herself one more try. This time, this time, is the one that counts. She wills herself to believe, knows that the miracle is just around the corner. Thinks about gymnastics camp last summer, about a dozen girls each sliding two fingers of each hand underneath the body of a thirteenth girl, lying prone on the floor. About their attempts to focus, focus, to pool their energy and their collective strength in their fingertips and lift her off the ground.

            Up. And down. Up-Mississippi. Down.

            Several of the other girls had giggled, let their fingers relax and their arms go limp. She had glared at them, hissed “Shhhhh!” and tried her best to focus, to feel her four fingers as steel rods underneath the girl’s back, to imagine a girl as weightless, her body a helium balloon, floating up, up, up… with the right amount of focus, she knows it’s possible: mothers have lifted wrecked cars off their babies, haven’t they? She’s read about that, too.

            Up, two, three, four-Mississippi. Down. Over, and over, until her head swims.   She had focused, eyes closed, her intent contagious, and the other girls had quieted in the circle around her. She had squeezed her eyes shut tighter, until rainbow dots skipped in front of them, whispered to the others about the body as a balloon, how they could make it happen on one, two, three…

            Up-Mississippi… four, five, six… she imagines her legs slicing through the air and being caught at the top, her ankles held steady by a thousand tiny fairies, keeping her upright. And down.

            … and Go! And they had braced, and lifted, and then, for just a moment, something shifted, and…

            Up. And then there comes that moment where gravity and balance meet, where her body shifts into a space of perfect balance, where all she has to do is breathe and try hard not to think. In this space she can stay up forever. One-Mississippi …all the way up to nine-Mississippi, ten-Mississippi, eleven-Mississippi, twelve-Mississippi, thirteen …

… she could’ve sworn there was an instant in which everyone believed, in which the girl’s body was so very nearly unmoored from gravity, where no weight at all rested on her fingers and she was suspended, perfectly, held by twenty-four girlish fingers…

… and mom won’t die…

… and down. She lies on the basement floor, staring at the ceiling, watching the dust motes dance in intricate patterns in the air above her.

There it is, your first sneak peek into this crazy project. I have been — I am — leery of showing the work to anyone. But I read a version of this a different lifetime ago at a bar in Toronto called The Red Spot, part of a monthly queer reading series organized by the lovely and amazing Elizabeth Ruth. So I don’t think I’m jinxing myself here. I’m writing like mad, squeezing out so much else of what I should be doing, because all the signs in the universe are telling me to hurry up already and finish this thing.

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… you come from a long line of people who ENJOYED PRESCHOOL. See?

Right there? That’s my mother, your Bubbie Ruthi (I was going to write “your maternal grandmother,” but in our household that wouldn’t really clarify anything now, would it?) in May of 1951, surrounded by a trio of stripy-shirted little boys, having what can only be described as a blast — A BLAST — at a lovely little preschool somewhere in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

See?

And who wouldn’t have a blast, really, with her minions surrounding her, hard at work? I love the composition of this photo (photographer unknown. Here, for the record, is a photograph of the young Elizabeth Taylor). Maybe what you need is minions — would you like some minions? If you think that would get you over the hump, I’m sure we could find some.

“Is it getting any better?” a fellow mom — who has witnessed your histrionics as she drops her own kids off — asked me yesterday at your music class. “Because he’s breaking my heart.”

Mine too. Mine too. But things are getting better. They really are. You no longer cry the night before you’re scheduled to go to preschool, nor for the entire morning leading up to it. And when the tears begin — usually about the time you’re supposed to get dressed and leave — we can sometimes distract you from them, although both Rachel and I have had the honour of towing a wailing three-year-old through the streets in the bike trailer. It’s a distinct feeling, that, saying good morning to neighbours and other parents while an air raid signal of sadness emanates from the trailer behind you. People can hear us coming, that’s for sure, and they smile sadly and shake their heads.

But it’s getting better. Now, you walk into the classroom on your own, and, often, the tears have stopped before I leave the room. You have started to leave your security blanket in your locker, which frees up both your hands for playing. A friend of yours had his first day last week and when he arrived, teary himself, you told your teacher, “I’m not going to cry today. I’m going to help.” And you did, rubbing his back and showing him the ropes.

It’s getting better, because before I pick you up I watch you through the windows, and you are smiling and skipping and picking carrots from the vegetable garden. Your teachers tell me that each day you talk more, do more, play more — that you have great days. Your eyes aren’t puffy like they used to be when I pick you up, and you talk about going back. You eat the food. Sometimes you even nap.

So, Isaac, here’s what I’m wondering: is it really that you dislike preschool so much, or is that you are committed to disliking the idea of preschool? Because I’m kind of inclined to think the latter, that the tears are at this point a habit rather than, say, a sign of actual, immediate, misery. I realize there’s a fine line — or, depending on your viewpoint, a vast chasm — between perception and reality, but I’m starting to think that you might just be okay.

Either that, or I’m an insensitive oaf of a parent. You say tomato, I say to-mah-to.

Still, as much as you tell me you’d like to, we’re not calling off the whole preschool thing just yet.

I will work on the minions, though.

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Isaac has a new evening ritual: The Asking of The Question.

“Where we going tomorrow?” he’ll inquire, all innocent like, but Rachel and I know where this is heading. Mostly, we are able to answer either that he’s going to spend the day with his longtime babysitter or that we’re having a family day. And he — quite literally — shouts “YAY!” and throws his arms in the air for joy. And then he says, “And after that, where we going? And after that?” He keeps up this line of questioning we reach the answer he’s been angling for. And then, there is no shouting of the YAY. There is no throwing of the arms in the air for the joy. Because, eventually, we do have to concede that Isaac will eventually have to head off to war preschool.

And then comes the mourning, the sobbing, the telling us repeatedly how much he does not want to go to preschool, how he doesn’t like it, how he wants to stay home with us or go to the babysitter. Last night, he sobbed himself to sleep. Then, at 5:30 this morning, he appeared in my bedroom doorway to pick up where he left off. “Mommy,” he said, “I don’t want to go to preschool.” He said it over and over, and then it would dull down for a little while as he almost let himself — and me — fall back asleep before jerking himself awake lest he relax and sleep and hasten the arrival of morning and the dreaded preschool. “I know, honey,” I keep telling him. “I know you don’t want to go. I know.”

Over the course of the morning he seemed to begin to resign himself to the thought that you might actually have to go. It was like moving through the stages of grief: from denial (“I don’t want to go to preschool.” I know.) to anger (“I don’t want to go to preschool!” I know, honey.) and bargaining (“But can I bring my blankie to preschool?” Of course you can, sweetheart.) to depression (“I don’t want to get out of bed today to go to preschool. I’m too tired to go to preschool.” Well, of course you are, because you woke up at five in the morning and have been protesting about preschool ever since.) and, finally, acceptance (“Will you tell me on the clock when I can go home?”).

YAY!

Fortunately, Rowan was available to add some levity to the situation. At first, he was solicitous and sweet, bringing his brother teddy bears and blankets and offering hugs and wise counsel: “I didn’t like junior kindergarten when I first started, but it got better.” When that didn’t work, he resorted to scatological humor, with much more success: “Isaac, are you going to bring POO to preschool? Are you going to bring YOUR BUM to preschool? Are you going to bring PEE to preschool?” Normally I try not to pay attention to the potty talk, but, given that it was the first time I had seen Isaac crack so much as a smile in 12 hours, I played right along. The reprieve didn’t last, though, and Isaac trudged tearfully into the beautifully appointed preschool classroom with its fishies and magic wands and natural lighting and oatmeal with raisins and coloured water. COLOURED WATER! What’s not to like, right? The best I can say about the morning was that at least he managed to walk into the room of his own accord, and that I didn’t hear screaming as I exited the building. I remembered my friend Scott’s comment about leaving his son at daycare lo these many years ago: “Maybe the saddest thing in the entire world is a child who is waving goodbye and crying at the same time.”

It’s classic (isn’t it? Say yes.). I know he’s fine at preschool. I know it’s a nice place, full of lovely, caring teachers, beautiful play areas, wonderful food. I mean, I’d spend the day there if I could. I know he eats well and naps there. I even have proof — in the form of photographs taken by the teachers of him enjoying various activities in an effort to convince him that he actually might like preschool — that he has fun there, at least some of the time. But it’s still just so, so sad to have my little boy — my usually happy little boy — be so, so sad.

I ache for him. I really do. I get — or, at least, I assume I get — how much his little world revolves around security, around the familiar. He’s all about the comfort zone, is Isaac: his mommies, his babysitter, his brother, his blanket, his thumb. With enough of those props in place, he’s set, outgoing, everybody’s sweetheart. He does funny little shuffling dances and proffers kisses, asks questions, offers his help. But he doesn’t feel safe yet, apparently, at preschool. And thus he mourns. And I ache for him.

Mostly, though, I ache at the amount of time he spends grieving for the future, his sorrow for the thing that is about to happen. I ache at all the non-preschool hours, hours that could be spent perfectly happily, but that instead are spent anticipating with horror the next day’s events. He’s awfulizing, as my friend Monica likes to call it, living in the future, and a bleak future at that. It’s a skill that I have, sadly, perfected, one that I now spend much of my time trying to get less good at. But I am pushing 40 and Isaac is three, much too young to be envisioning a hopeless tomorrow. “Honey,” I keep saying to him, “right now we’re not at preschool. Right now, we’re going to bed. Right now, we’re fine.” I want him to Be Here Now, and he spends every minute of Now trying to impress upon me the urgency of the fact that he does not want to go Somewhere Else Tomorrow.

This, too, will pass. It will. It must. I’m envisioning a positive future here. Maybe someday soon my son will, too.

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