A few days ago I returned home to find my daughter's play date heading out the door with a bag of parting gifts.  

"Sadie gave me all these things!" the child shouted with glee, clutching her grocery bag of booty.

"Yep, Sadie gave her all those things," the play date's dad said with a little sigh that I know meant "I'll be picking these things up at my house now..."

I sat down on the grass next to my husband and watched our friends drive away and then I congratulated him for clearing our house of a bit of the clutter.

"Yep," he said.  "She even gave away Squirrel."

"You let her give away Squirrel?" I barked.

"I asked her twice if she was sure about it and she said she was," he replied.

"I can't believe you gave away Squirrel," I hissed.  I launched myself off the grass and stomped inside, mumbling.

A bit of back story:  Nearly three years ago, when Sadie was brand new to pre-school, she formed a tight relationship with this little stuffed squirrel in her classroom.  Every day we would find her making up songs for the squirrel and carrying on intimate conversations with the squirrel and one day, with the assistance of our babysitter, Sadie liberated Squirrel from the confines of the classroom and brought him home to live a pampered life.  Squirrel has attended zillions of tea parties, worn a tutu to ballet class and donned striped pajamas for bed.  For Halloween last year, at Sadie's behest, I made him a witch costume.  For no reason at all I made him a kimono out of some  silk pajamas headed for the hand-me-down pile.  Sadie was attached to the little guy and (not to sound too squirrelly) so was I.  

So I was mad at my husband.  Mad at him for failing to understand the importance of this little toy.  Of course instead of bringing up my issues in a calm and rational manner, I sped through dinner preparation and gave terse directions for table setting and hand washing.  

My husband (bless him and bless him again) was patient.  "I thought it was a good thing," he said.  "I knew Squirrel was a big deal and I thought it was very kind of her to give him to a friend."

I opened my mouth to say something, but suddenly all I could do was cry.  In between sobs, I tried to explain.  "It's not Squirrel," I said.

"I didn't really think it was," my husband said, wrapping his arms around me.

I cried for the fact that my daughter was growing.  I cried because I miss that funny little girl with the nonsensical language and the round baby belly.  I cried because she's almost in kindergarten and because she's sometimes mean as a snake.  I cried so much, my husband offered to drive over to our friends' house and bring Squirrel back.

"It's okay," I said.  "Things change."  I figured if at four she knew how to let go, then at forty, I should know how to do it, too.

The next day, our babysitter, A., arrived and as usual I gave her the schedule updates and kid mood forecast for the day.  "Also," I said, "Sadie gave Squirrel away."

A's eyes filled with tears.  "Our squirrel?" 

I turned to my husband.  "I'm bringing him home," I said.  

Squirrel is back.  And my daughter is delighted.  "How was your sleepover?" she asked.  She packed him into a basket and took him to a birthday party.  She made him a bed in my husband's slipper.  She is not headed to college.  She is still small and silly and thinks nothing of wearing a tiara to the grocery store.  She is four going on five and we have all the time in the world.  

My son is home sick with an earache and a sore throat and a little fever all of which combine to slow him down and make him especially prone to hand holding, lap sitting and shoulder leaning.  I am amazed by my child's capacity for tenderness.  I'm sorry he has to be sick to let it surface, but I can't help but be grateful to see it under any circumstance.  

Lately his attitude has been so bad that I've begun to wonder if the downhill slope from six to seven is a slide into certain juvenile deliquency.   He shakes his fist at me when ask him to put on his clothes.  He shouts at me when I wonder when he'll finish his homework.  He grits his teeth.  He kicks his sister.  And then, just when I think he's become as hardened as Tony Soprano, he sobs inconsolably over a missing sock or the discovery that we're out of "Triple Berry O's."

Some time ago, our pre-school teacher suggested I read a series of child development books which distill each year into a handy Cliff's Notes size tome.  According to these books, my 4 year old was "Wild and Wonderful" and my 5 year old was "Sunny and Serene."  I'm wondering if my seven year old will be "Incarcerated or Institutionalized."  

A couple of days ago, I was talking with two of my dear friends, both mothers to six and half year old boys.  "You look tired," they said.  "How are you?" they asked.

"It's been pretty rough." I said.  "Theo is crying all the time.  Or yelling all the time.  One or the other."

They both looked relieved.  "You, too?"  We all started to talk at the same time.  Threats, tears, violence, remorse.  All part and parcel of being almost seven.  And all happening in other houses all over our neighborhood.  Normal kid stuff.  I had almost forgotten one of the most important things you can do as a parent.  You can talk to other parents.  Though what's going on in your house might seem like the fifth act of a Shakespearean tragedy, nine times out of ten, it's going on somewhere else too.  Labeling something "developmental" is just another way of saying it's not going to stay that way.  I think suddenly of the now defunct Polaroid photo.  Holding that blank square and waiting for the image to develop was one of the pleasures of my youth and young adulthood.  My boy is emerging, he's developing.  It's hard work.  He's entitled to be cranky and crazy and crying.  Just as I am entitled to be all of those things in the hard process of becoming a parent.  Because I'm developing, too.  

Today, I played two games of Yahtzee, three games of Trouble and too many rounds of Connect 4 to count with a boy who sometimes calls me Mom and sometimes calls me "Turkey Pants."  Today, he leaned against me and gave me kisses on the palm of my hand.  Today he fed me a strawberry and told me he loved me.  Tomorrow, the fever may be down and the hackles may be up, but it's only a stage.

Last night, I sewed the tail on a little purple mouse named Squeaker.  The mouse was not alive, though its tail was so leathery that it must have been something alive at some point.  It's the kind of little mouse you buy at the pet store to give to your cat.  A kind of training mouse, I suppose.  Though we have a cat, this particular mouse belongs to my daughter.  She likes to go to the pet store and often buys things for our cat that I know she actually wants for herself so I'm pleased in a way that she's cut the charade and taken full ownership of this mouse, whose name she pronounces with the emphasis on the first syllable so it's "SQUEAK...er."  I do not pronounce the name correctly, nor did I sew the tail correctly.  I used red thread which was the only color I could find and contrasted nicely with the dyed purple fur and matched the little critter's eyes, but Sadie was appalled.  "You wrecked it," she shouted.  "You are always messing things up," she continued.  "I hate you.  Why do you have to be so wrong?"  I took a deep breath and reminded myself of my new plan to REMAIN CALM and BE PEACEFUL.  

I have been taking a lot of deep breaths lately and asking my children to take them with me.  "Slow down," I say.  "I understand," I say.   I say these things in what I hope is a loving voice.  I say them even when I want to throw my hands in the air and scream.  

My clumsy repair of Squeaker's tail was not the first thing to go wrong in Sadie's day and I tried to remember that.  First of all, Squeaker had lost his tail.  More to the point, he'd had it yanked off by one of the Star Wars loving, gun-finger pointing, girl-teasing boys in Sadie's class.  The biggest problem, though and one that recurs with alarming frequency, is that Sadie wants a pet.  She wants a real live pet.  She wants any kind of pet. Yesterday it was a white mouse with red eyes.  Before that it was a hamster that would live in a pink, sparkly castle and before that a rabbit and before that a dog and a pony and a turtle and on and on. 

We do have a cat named Pokey.  And a fish whose name is Tanya.  But if it were left to Sadie we would have a menagerie.  

Over the course of my childhood I had somewhere around sixty-eight pets.  Your standard dogs and cats gave way to guinea pigs, ferrets, a pair of gerbils named Sam and Janet Evening, an iguana, a goat, an owl, chameleons...  Two guinea pigs quickly became four and then eventually ten.  The gerbils multiplied.  Everything smelled of cedar shavings and urine.  

There are days when I like the idea of a dog.  There are days when I come dangerously close to bringing home that sparkly hamster castle.  My mother was a volunteer at the zoo.  My brother went to the State Fair and brought two baby goats home in his car.  Perhaps the need for a menagerie is in my blood.  

Last night, when Sadie seemed to be about to stop crying about Squeaker's tail, my son looked up from his homework.  

"So, it looks like that pet situation is over," he said, rolling his eyes.

Sadie looked at him for a second through soggy lashes.  

"I want a white mouse with red eyes," she wailed.

I will remain calm and be peaceful, but that "pet situation" is far from over.

I read my writing in front of a live audience two nights ago.  Thrilling.  And terrifying.  Left me wanting more.  More chances to read my words, but also more chances to hear the words of other writers read aloud.  We sit hunched over our desks, fingers racing or limping over the page and we fill hard drives and notebooks and binders with words but rarely do we speak these words aloud.  

The piece I read was a section from my memoir.  It is the story of how when my son was born, my father was dying from Alzheimer's.  It is the part of the book that always chokes me up no matter how many times I have gone over it.  I was worried that there, on the stage, with the bright lights in my eyes, I would burst into tears.  I read it over and over to myself, trying to sap the emotion through repetition.  

About an hour  before the show, after I'd made dinner for the kids, changed out of my day jeans (a couple days in, baggy knees, some dried yogurt from Sadie's breakfast keeping company with a smudge of turmeric from my lunch of lentils and rice) and into night jeans (clean.)   To my daughter's delight, I put on lipstick.  At the computer, I increased the font size on my pages before printing my selection and because Theo is a six-year old boy and because his ears are tuned to the sound of the computer waking itself from sleep, he appeared at my side.

"What are you reading?" He asked.  Instead of waiting for an answer, he started to read the first couple of lines.  He's reading, but still slowly, his mouth feeling the words as he sounds them out.  

"What's it about," he asked.

"It's about you," I said.

"Read it to me."

And so I did.  I read three pages about how his birth coincided with my Dad's death.  I read about contractions and the feel of a newborn head between my legs.  I read about my realization at age nine that my father would not be with me forever.  As I read, Theo leaned against me, resting his cheek against mine.  When I finished, he smiled his happiest smile.  It's the one that makes his dimples sink in all the way up to his eyebrows.  It's the one that shows both rows of tiny baby teeth all the way back to the molars.  

Sadie had joined us somewhere around the middle and she lifted her head off my shoulder to take in her brother's wide grin.  Then she looked up at me.

"Where's my story?" She asked.  

"I haven't written it yet," I replied.

"We could help you write it," Theo said.

I assured him that they were helping.  Every day they help me write even if I don't write a word. Everything that they give me is accumulating just the way my written words pile up on the hard drive and the notebook and the scrap paper in the glovebox.  At some point, what goes in has got to come out.  

There is a book somewhere for Sadie but because I haven't written it yet and I don't want to forget here are a few gems from the last couple of days.

When I bought her a new skirt, she cut the tags out and pulled it on, turning to inspect herself from all angles in the mirror.  When she was satisfied, she gave her hair a little pat and clapped her hands joyfully.  Then she took a bow as though the applause had come from someone else.  

Yesterday, when I arrived home, she was lounging on the stairs wearing silky pink pajamas.  "This," she said giddily, holding up a pink stuffed rabbit with a big turquoise silk flower clipped to its head, "used to be just a bunny.  But now, he's Hawaiian bunny!"

Later she wondered if I'd met the "newest member of our family."  She pulled me upstairs to her room and there on the tray of the doll's highchair was a small plastic bowl filled with dirt and leaves.  "He's having his dinner," she said.  "But he really wants to meet you."  She picked up the bowl and held it under my nose and announced "It's a roly-poly!  His name is Junior Mint."

After an extended silence, I feel as though I ought to have something momentous to say, but all I can think about is dust.  We've been in the new house long enough for dust to accumulate.  It's our dust and not the dust of the previous owners which I swept away along with crumpled newspaper and frayed bits of brown cardboard packing boxes.  Though their Sunday New York Times subscription remains, their dust is long gone.  Our dust is clouding the wooden mantle in the living room and mixes with bits of crushed corn puffs along the edges of the dining room rug.  Our dust sparkles with glitter fallen from pre-school art projects.  Our dust becomes tangled with a strand of my mother's silver hair and takes on new life as a dust bunny.  Our dust is made of us: skin, hair, cereal, sparkle, the whole shebang, and it filters into the cracks of this house and makes it ours.  

Perhaps I am rationalizing my inability to "dust."  Isn't it funny that the verb that means to remove dust is the same as dust?  Makes it seem like dust has the upper hand.

Today is the last whole day I will have in my old house.  Tomorrow, I wake up to watch burly movers carry all of my things down thirty-five cement steps to the truck that will transport everything to the driveway that leads to the new house.  

The steps.  Thirty-five steps.  Marked with a stencilled address and divided right up the middle by a heavy chain strung through metal posts.

These steps made me angry when I first laid eyes on them; made me doubt the sanity of my realtor.  But once I had scaled them, my not quite year-old son wrapped tight in my arms, I marveled at the view and the little oasis of a yard created by the distance of these thirty-five steps.

I carried groceries up these steps.  And my son in the little car-seat we always called "the bucket."  I taught my not quite two year old son to climb these steps while his sister grew in my belly.  I carried my big pregnant body up these steps along with my son and my groceries.  

When my daughter was born through an emergency c-section, my doctor came to my house to remove the staples in my incision.  He didn't want me to have to walk down all of those steps.

Now that my children are older, the steps take less time to climb or more depending upon the day.  Theo runs up the stairs while Sadie dawdles somewhere in the middle visiting with a line of ants or admiring a fallen leaf.

These steps place distance between my family and the slightly grimy street below.  As I climb them, I leave behind the broken glass, bits of scattered trash and the constant graffiti dialog on the walls of the restaurant across the street.  I fix my eyes  up and ahead, climbing toward my palm tree, the tidy row of cypress that lines one side of our yard, the bright stripe of our patio umbrella.  

My neighbors on both sides have as many steps into their houses and in order to maintain a kind of basic familiarity and friendliness, in order to remain "neighborly" we have to be ascending or descending at almost the exact same time.  This rarely happens.  Our house is private, but it is also isolated.  I like my solitude, but I can be lonely.  When I am alone too long, I start to forget how to interact.  

At our new house, there are no steps, just a long, smooth driveway.  There are houses on both sides and we've already met our neighbors.  They stop to talk over the hedge, wave hello through the kitchen window as I roll out the trash cans and offer us the use of their telephone until our new line is activated. (They're of an age where cell phones are still a new-fangled invention.)   I can already see that there will be days when I might long for the anonymity of a flight of stairs.  But I also see how, for me, it will be helpful to have this little burst of contact; this practice at relating with the world.  

The very first thing that happened when I walked through the door tonight was that my six year old boy rocketed across the room, offering a library book.

"It's about Abe Lincoln.  He died.  He was shot.  By an actor."

I settled my groceries on the floor at my feet and when I knelt to take in this news, my eyes met the wide, blue eyes of my son.  

"It really happened." He said.

He was thrilled.  Thrilled.  More visibly thrilled by this book than by any number of "Star Wars" comics and the unending adventures of "Captain Underpants" combined.  Those were stories.  This was true.

"Read from here," he said and then he lowered his voice.  "It's about the killing part."  

I sat back on my heels and listened as Theo described the blood on Lincoln's head, the shape of the gun and Booth's jump to the stage below.  I don't like guns.  I don't like shooting.  When we read, I usually skip over the gruesome parts, cutting with agility around all kinds of bleak scenarios.  I thought that by trimming around violence, I could build for my children a more peaceful world.  Turns out I was wrong.  For Halloween, Theo did not want to be Luke Skywalker.  He wanted to be Darth Vadar.  My daughter invents stories of Evil Queens and Lost Orphans and Wicked Stepmothers.  It's the bad guys who get all the best lines; the bad guys who stick in the imagination and become the kind of titillating ghost stories that are too scary to continue, too delicious to end.  Violence is interesting.   When Theo finishes talking, I wait.  I'm wondering if John Wilkes Booth is going to find a place in Theo's imagination.  Is this drunk actor going to be more interesting than the man who freed the slaves?

"Mama," Theo said, "Read about Abe Lincoln.  He did so much."

We learned that Lincoln started his career at 28 and that he married Mary Todd.  When I try to skip over the fact that Lincoln lost two sons to illness, my own son catches me and makes me re-read the paragraph.  My voice cracks.  We read through the Civil war and I muscle through paragraphs about screaming men and drowned horses.  When I get to the Gettysburg Address, both of my children are still listening.  

"Should I read this?" I ask pointing to the big block of text on the page.  

"Read it, Mama," Sadie says.  She settles against me and her curls tickle my chin as I read Lincoln's dedication.  It is a beautiful speech to read aloud.  I am grateful to read it aloud to my children.  By the end, my eyes are wet and both of my kids are solemn.

"That is important," Theo says.  

I ask if he knows what it is about and he replies, "it's about being good to people."  

"It's good to be good," Sadie says.

The book ends with the shooting.  It's only one page and I read the whole thing.  

Theo can read.  He can read about the death of a son, the loss of a battle and the big, giant billboards for "My Bloody Valentine in 3D."  But he can also read the words, "with malice toward none; with charity for all..."  And I am here to help him understand.