Hattie Belle and I have an evening just to ourselves. I surprise her with a DVD rental: Tangled. She’s seen it, but I haven’t.

“OH MY GOSH. MOMMY, YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE IT,” she says in her big, bold, OMG voice. “She’s brave and strong, and the mommy doesn’t even die.”

“Good,” I say. “I hate it when Disney kills off the mommies. It drives me crazy.”

“I know,” says HB. She does know. She knows me and my particular rants well.

So she is not surprised when I cry—not once, not twice, but five freaking times—during the course of the movie. Which is AN ANIMATED MOVIE. A CHILDREN’S MOVIE. About Rapunzel. A post-modern Rapunzel who has all kinds of moxie and healing powers and escapes from her tower with her unruly locks and finds her groove, a cool horse, an awesome new coif, her true parents, and a sensitive boyfriend named Eugene.

“THE WITCH TOOK AWAY THE BABY! I HATE WHEN THEY STEAL BABIES! WHY DO THEY HAVE TO STEAL BABY PRINCESSES?” I howl, sniffling by the middle of the first scene. “It’s STUPID.”

She pats my arm, bemused. “Mommy, you KNOW that Disney movies ALWAYS have a happy ending. TRUST me.”

“BUT THE BABY’S GONE. Look at her poor parents. I don’t know what I would do if someone took you and your sister and hid you both in a tower.” I sniffle harder and start rooting for tissues. “This is TERRIBLE.”

“It’s okaaaaaay, Mommy. You’ll see. Shhhh. Just WATCH.”

I do watch. And by the time the King and Queen release the lanterns on Rapunzel’s 18th birthday, and Rapunzel and Eugene are sitting in a boat making her dream of seeing the lanterns come true, I am snuffling and snorting like an asthmatic pug. Then, when Eugene almost croaks from a stab wound from the evil witch, after sacrificing himself so Rapunzel’s Heart Can Go On, I am full-on bawling. And when Rapunzel is finally reunited with her true parents? Fuhgeddaboudit. Sobs. Choking. Ugly cry.

HB wraps her arms around me and lets me cry. “It’s okay. We have a lot of emotions in this family,” she says calmly, patting my wet cheeks, cradling my head.

I gulp. “I knoooooow. I’m TIRED of eee [gasp] moh [gasp] shuns.”

“I know,” she says. “I knooow.”

“I feel like I cry all the time,” I say. “I’m sorry I’m not better at not crying.”

She laughs. “It’s OKAY, Mommy. Nobody’s perfect.”

“The movie just got me,” I say. “Kind of like the time you felt bad for the weird twin brothers in Kitchen Nightmares—”

“Can we not talk about that?” she says, half-laughing, half-worried. The twin brothers and their sad old restaurant with the chewing gum stuck underneath all the dirty tables broke her heart, trust me.

“Sure, honey,” I say. “But maybe it’s not a bad thing, right?”

“What?”

“That we can feel other people’s sadness, too. It means we can keep an eye out for people who are hurting in the world, and help when we can.”

She agrees, nodding.

At bedtime, we give more thought to the next tattoo I will get. We have been trying for a few months to come up with just the right symbols to represent HB and her sister.

The sun is a major symbol in Tangled, a clobber-you-over-the-head symbol. Still, I think.

“Sometimes,” I tell Hattie B, “you remind me of the sun, and your sister, of the moon.”

She grins. She likes this. “You know, I AM sunshine. I give off light all the time.”

“You really do.”

“Sophie’s grumpier.”

“Well, not always. Her light is just different. More…changeable. She glows.”

“In the mornings, she’s crankier.”

“Not always. But you were pretty sunny in the mornings as a baby, still are. Even cracking yourself up with, ‘Good morning, Pancake’ was a pretty sunny thing to do,” I say. “Does the sun feel right to you? As a symbol for you?”

“Yeah! And Sophie’s like the moon. She likes dark things and sometimes you can see her and sometimes you can’t.”

“Clouds can come out and hide the sun’s energy a little, too,” I say. “You don’t ever have to feel like you need to always be sunny. Even the sun needs a break once in a while.”

“But most of the time I have a lot of energy.”

She takes her small thumbs to my tattooed wrist: my áfram. She places one thumb under the á.

“The sun would go here,” she says, “and the moon—” She puts her other thumb under the m.

“Down there?”

She nods with great import.

“I kind of like it,” I say. “But Soph wants a rose too. Hmm. And you wanted a vine, for the Forest of Arden, or a tree?”

“And I want fairies.”

“Hey, it’s not your arm that’s got to get the tattoo needles,” I point out.

“It’s not me who wants MY arm to get the needles,” she retorts.

“Excellent point. Well, I’m running out of canvas here.”

She cracks up. “Oh, yeah! The tattoos could go all up your arm, like, oh, and there, oh! And here! Mountains!”

She touches my cheek. I smile. I am not crying anymore—at least, not at this moment—and that is something.

“Bed,” I say.

I tuck her into her covers. She pulls her baby blanket to her chin, as she always does. Her long brown hair with its faded pink streak is a swirled tangle on her pillow. It could use a brushing, but the brushing can wait.

Sophie sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” all by herself, in front of the whole school. Spring 2010. Her idea. We never saw it coming.

Downstairs, Soph is on a roll. She is doing the karaoke version of “Baby, Hit Me One More Time” for the twelfth time tonight. She’s stinkin’ good.

HB and I hung in there for a while, trying to learn all the dance moves so we could be proper backup dancers for Soph, but we’re beat, man. Those backflips took a lot out of us.

*****

My explanations take a lot out of them. And me.

“I don’t like the name of this song,” I announce lamely to the household. Again.

“We know, Mommy. You said that, like, forty times.”

“She means ‘hit me’ like, in cards. Like, ‘try me again.’

“Maybe fifty times.”

‘Give me another card.’ Blackjack. Like, uh, ‘CALL ME.’ Not HITTING hitting.”

“Blackjack?”

“Poker. Card games. You know it’s NOT ABOUT HITTING. Tell me you know it’s not about hitting.”

They perform their gold medal Olympic synchronized eye-rolling routine. Flawless. “WE KNOOOOOWWWWW.”

“Because hitting is always bad. ALWAYS. Unless it’s self-defense. It’s totally okay to beat the poo out of serial killers and anyone who touches you inappropriately. You, or your friends or family or pets. Then you can WHACK THE POO OUT OF THEM, and I will totally support you.”

“We know.”

“Okay. I just…I wish Britney named it something else.”

“We know.”

“Sing on. I do wish she kept her belly covered. It’s a little inappropriate. Let’s pretend she’s singing about cookies.”

They sigh. “Okaaaaaay.”

Mommy is a dork, yo, but a well-meaning one.

****

I have a little gig. I have a little gig at a big place where the hate hitters come out to hit, and hit hard. They make the Breed ‘Em and Weep trolls look like inert yard gnomes.

I’m not going to read the comments there. Because that ain’t pretty, there. I never signed any contract that agrees to let people poop on my doormat or into my open hands. Someone made the mistake of reporting a comment that was nasty, and it just got bounced into my email inbox. Goodness GRACIOUS, the world is full of asshats.

I could write that I had sold my house, used the proceeds to start an orphanage in Central Africa, given up all gluten, sugar, meat and sex, and cured AIDS, cancer and bad hair extensions. And That Brand of Hater would appear. There’s a hater for every story.

It’s pretty wack. Anonymous hating. I can’t quite wrap my head around it.

And I don’t know how you read THIS general story:

I loved my ex-husband very, very much. He loved me. We have wonderful daughters. We broke up. We both tried online dating. A sad, funny thing happened. I took the sad, funny thing as a sign from the sad, funny universe that maybe we should work it out. I thought this for perfectly valid reasons. He did not agree, for his own perfectly valid reasons. It didn’t work out. We are all still alive and breathing. The End.

And get this conclusion:

The writer is a petty, picky bitch. The writer is lucky to have her own teeth. She needs to get a dog. The writer is a $#@!ing twit.

A friend wrote me, “A slut does everyone. A bitch does everyone but you.”

That made me laugh.

In that case, I guess I am a bitch.

And I am lucky to have my own teeth. I will add that to my Gratitude Journal for Petty, Picky Bitches and Twits. Thank you.

Way ahead of you on the dogs, buddy.

Every time I think I can’t possibly come up with another 500 words, the universe makes sure I get the inspiration I need. Today, Sophie threw up at school before lunch and needed to come home. It’s her dad’s week with her, but he was at least 45 minutes out, visiting a friend in a small town.

D called, asking if there was any way I could scoop up ailing Sophie. We try to accommodate each other. We try hard to be flexible with plans, when it comes to the kids and our often erratic schedules. We do this much right, still, together yet not.

So I said of course, I’d get Sophie right away, bring her to my house instead.

I hung up and tried not to wonder about His Mysterious Friend. I have an extremely low success rate when it comes to Not Wondering.

We tend not to offer information about our personal lives. Work, maybe, we’ll chat about. But otherwise, it’s been a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy since we parted. This policy will eventually need repeal, like the more notorious version. But we are not quite there yet.

The kids, of course, are natural, unprompted conduits. They startle me (and surely D too) by offering tidbits, swapping opinions, dropping names.

“She’s definitely NOT a girlfriend,” HB has been saying of her dad’s friend. “I think she’s MARRIED. Daddy hasn’t found, like, the LOVE.”

“Ah,” I say, to that, my heart pounding too fast.

“No, she’s not married anymore, I don’t think,” says Sophie. “I don’t know WHAT it is.”

“Ah,” I say, to that, my heart pounding too fast.

To quote dear Gaga: “Eh, eh / there’s nothing more I can say.”

*****

Sophie is greenish-white when I get to school, with dark smudges under eyes. She looks bruised and dazed. She’d been sleeping on the couch in the main entrance hall.

“Hey, baby.”

“Hey.”

“I heard you threw up.”

“At least I did it in the toilet.”

“Couldn’t agree more. Excellent target.”

At home, I tucked her into her bed. I felt her relief as she settled into her fuzzy aqua fleece blanket, with Moe purring away, cradled in her elbow. Here, she has her own room, and that means a lot to her now that she’s almost 10.

“Sleep,” I command her. “I’ll leave a cold juicebox by your bed.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll try a bagel in an hour or so, after you drink a little something, sound good?”

“Yeah. I’m starving.”

Each time she comes home to me, even if I have seen her just the day before, she is something different. Wavier hair. Taller. Funny new expression, a new laugh she’s trying out. I don’t want to extol her physical beauty, not too much, but sometimes—even when she’s green and pale and nearly translucent—I see the exquisite young woman she’s becoming. And in that moment, I forget to breathe.

*****

Hattie and I watched “The Sound of Music” this weekend when she was feeling down. She knows I love the scene when the Captain reveals his love to Maria, and they sing “Something Good.”

somewhere in my wicked / miserable past / I must have done / something good
nothing comes from nothing / nothing ever could / so somewhere in my youth
or childhood / I must have done / something, something good

Yes. I must have done something good, to have the beauty of not one, but two, wonderful, beautiful, idiocyncratic, gorgeously flawed, fantastically funny and moxie-bright daughters lighting up this life of mine, which can get so very dark at times. I must have done something, something good.

I have done so, so many things wrong over the years that I ache to think of them: all the soldiers of my idiocy, my illness, my folly, my desire to be heard. These worn solders still stand guard stiffly, never far from me. They will not leave. I ask them to leave me. But they are silent statues, standing witness to themselves. I let them be, for now, until I can come up with a better plan. I know how to navigate between them, keep my eyes averted when I don’t want to remember. And very often, I don’t want to remember.

*****

Soph manages to sleep some, down a juicebox, and eat a bagel with cream cheese. She looks less green now. A little feverish, maybe. I send her to take a shower and put on warm jammies. She does.

“Do you want to sleep with me tonight?” I ask.

Her eyes shine. “Yes! I have awful nightmares whenever I feel sick like this.”

“I know.”

We settle in to watch her choice on Netflix: episodes of my favorite childhood show, Fame. Her choice. I cannot believe my luck. She can’t get enough of Doris and Montgomery and Leroy and Coco and Bruno and the girl from Footloose.

“You were born there! And see that bus? That went up to the neighborhood where we all first lived together. Isn’t that amazing?”

She is more fascinated by the Casio keyboards, that Bruno seems enamored of that technology. “I mean, really?” she says. “You thought THAT was as good as it was going to get? I mean…that’s kind of…stupid, sorry, I don’t mean, you know?”

“It wasn’t stupid. You can’t see your own future, can you? You can’t tell me what kind of technology you’ll be looking at in 10 or 20 years. We thought all that stuff was amazing.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said stupid.”

“That’s okay, hon.”

We snuggle companionably through two episodes, grooving along in bed, wiggling, and singing the theme song. And making sure we get the “FAME COSTS. AND RIGHT HERE IS WHERE YOU START PAYIN’. IN SWEAT” just as good as Debbie Allen doing it.

I point out that Sophie is already braver than Bruno Martelli, who doesn’t want to share his music. Sophie smiles.

“I’m so proud of you. Two stages…solo.”

“It would have been three if Ms. W hadn’t been sick.”

“I know. You are ahead of the game. Don’t lose that wonderful courage. Keep singing. And SHARE your music, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Because it’s a gift, kid. Truly. Trust me on this. Don’t stop sharing it.”

She rolls her eyes ever so slightly, but she is still smiling. She’s listening.

*****

Bedtime. I shut my laptop, reach to put it on the nightstand. My short nightgown has yanked up.

“MOMMY,” says Sophie, horrified. “I JUST SAW YOUR BUTT CHEEK.”

“Yes, dear,” I say. I do indeed have a wedgie. I smack my bum. “It’s okay. Take a look. Yours will look more like this one day.”

She screws up her nose.

“What? I’m your mother. I’m not bad, for 40. This is what 40 looks like.”

She points at the back of my thigh. “You have veins.”

“Yup,” I say. “You will too. I don’t have too many, though. I thought I would have more.”

“You look pretty good for your age,” she concedes. “I would say you look 34. Was 34 a good year?”

“Thirty-four was a great year, yeah. I’d be happy staying 34. I was happy then. But I’m happy now too. I’m just still figuring it all out. This new life.”

“Thirty-four then,” she says, and snuggles down into her pillow, closing her eyes.

*****

By the time I let the dogs back inside, Sophie is asleep. On the bed, beside Sophie, Fanny Dog licks Moe incessantly. From the beginning she has adopted him as her pup, and licks every inch of him for at least two hours daily. She seems to think she is resuscitating him. It borders on frantic. Moe doesn’t mind. He purrs away, grateful for the vigorous attention.

We are all grateful for the attention of others. The key is to figure out which kind is our salvation, and which kind is our poison.

*****

I have been receiving the attention of others at this blog for almost six years. I don’t sweat it. I don’t fight it. I am rarely on the mama blogger drama radar, I don’t get cool car trips or iPads, I don’t do radio or TV interviews. I may brave BlogHer one of these days, but I’m good. I can honestly say I’ve done it for me, mostly. And for them. I really just like knowing that if I died tomorrow, there would be this: words from their mama, to keep always. Words that proved they mattered, and that I was paying attention, even when I knew how to do nothing else.

I still have no idea how to write about Iceland.

So I will catch you up on something else.

My mother stopped talking to me in 2010. Briefly. I knew I was in especially Big Trouble when she stopped responding to my Facebook posts.

I pled and I plead…The Moe:

I sent a picture.

I asked my mother: “WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE? LOOK AT THAT FACE!”

She hung up on me.

I posted on her Facebook wall. “YOU ARE THE WOMAN WHO TOOK IN EVERY STRAY ANIMAL THAT THE NEIGHBORHOOD KIDS BROUGHT US. JUST POINTING THAT OUT.”

She was not amused.

*****

I can’t give my kids ski trips or trips to Paris. So I like to give them flea-bitten, unweaned, shivering kittehs.

MoeGate went down in November. Hattie Belle and I made what was supposed to be a very brief trip to the Death Star (Walmart) to pick up red paper plates and red cups for her Very Jazzy 7th Birthday Party, where her buddies would bedazzle berets and play Pin-the-Sax-on-the-Girl-Saxophonist. You think I’m kidding.

Anyhoo.

Upon exiting, we passed two young women, each with a kitten tucked in her jacket. One kitten was white-and-black and mighty cute, larger than the other, fluffy. The other kitten was all black, tiny, runtish, and shivering. He had goop coming out of one eye. He looked sick.

Oh crap.

The two women asked us if we could take a kitten because they couldn’t bring them home. They said they lived somewhere with too many cats already, and they would be in trouble. I said, no, sorry, full house.

Hattie and I got in the car. I drove around the Death Star parking lot twice, chewing my lip.

“You’re going back to talk to the ladies, aren’t you?” asked Hattie. She knows her mother well.

“Crap. Yes.”

“You said crap.”

“I know. Come on. Out of the car.”

“Can we have one? Please?”

“I don’t know. Let me just…ask the girls a few questions.”

Hattie beamed. She’d been asking for weeks, “When can I have a pet of my OWN?” This was proof to her that Santa, God and fairies in every nation had been listening.

The girls were thrilled that we came back. They took one look at tiny Hattie Belle, and the one holding the white-and-black kitten nodded to the runty black kitty.

“Take the black one,” said the girl. “He’s really gentle. He’d be good for her.”

Just then, a couple stopped to pet the white-and-black kitten. I stopped worrying about that one.

Hattie and I petted the little black one. He was now shivering really hard.

“Yes?” said the woman holding him.

“Okay,” I said. “What else do I need to know?”

“Nothing. Just take him.”

“It’s a boy?”

“Yeah.”

Hattie yelled, “OH MY GOSH ARE WE REALLY TAKING HIM? CAN WE KEEP HIM?”

“Only if the other animals don’t eat him and he doesn’t freeze to death before we get him home. Get in the car. You have to hold him.”

She flung herself into her seat, and exclaimed, “IT’S MY BIRTHDAY MIRACLE KITTEN!”

I prayed he wouldn’t go into shock and croak on her lap before we got him home. I strapped her in and settled the little guy on her lap. He reeked of cheap perfume, but he was purring like a champ.

Her birthday miracle kitten lived. Hattie named him Moe.

I had to go out of town before Moe could eat solid food. My mother melted slightly when she saw his teeny-tiny-ness. She fed him kitten formula while I was gone, and managed to successfully integrate Moe into the household of three other pets, including two dogs who initially thought he was a chew toy. She took him to the vet, and treated him for fleas.

And treated the other three pets for fleas.

And let Moe sleep on her chest.

I bought my mother a $100 bottle of Chanel No. 5 and presented it to her upon return.

Moe is another bonafide example around these here parts that the truism “what you save, saves you” is, well, true.

*****

I can’t touch the sadness in Hattie Bella. It’s been three years since her father and I were together, and she will occasionally still ask, “But WHY can’t Daddy sleep over? But WHY can’t you move into his loft building?”

One night a few months back, she bawled at bedtime for nearly three hours. Nothing I said, nothing I did, made a difference. When at one point I asked her why she was still crying, she said, “I just want to go back in time. So I can see what I was like when I was a baby. So I can see you and Daddy together. So we can all be a family again. I can’t remember anything from when I was a baby and it’s not fair.”

Then I was crying too.

Sophie rushed into H’s room to see what was going on. She said, “I haven’t seen you this depressed since the days when you were having The Really Bad Depression.”

I told her it was a wise assessment. I told her that I was crying because sometimes, it really sucks to be a kid, and mommies should really be able to make everything better. But we can’t.

Sophie hugged her sister and me.

Hattie’s right. It’s not fair. We effed it all up, for them.

But Moe helps. It’s not a Paris vacation, it’s not two parents living under the same roof. But it’s a kitten, out of the blue, and Mom said yes. She will remember that Mom said yes. I still do.

*****

As Hattie likes to say about her Birthday Miracle Kitten, “He’s a black cat who brings us luck.”

We did get lucky. Carlita, our tortie cat (my first cat ever), is friendly but more aloof. Hattie has never been able to hold her. But Moe lets H haul him around all day long. He is as gentle as the day is long (and as sweet as Eli’s desire to lick him is overwhelming).

Sometimes, we will find Moe sopping wet—a victim of an Eli Lick-By.

He is usually still purring. He purrs all day long. He never bites. He never scratches. Moe is a gem.

Hattie talks to him now when she’s feeling down. She likes being his “kind of official” owner, and Sophie is being a very, very, very good sport about this.

Moe doesn’t care who owns him, because he owns us and loves us all.

Moe’s only drawback? He is hard to see in pictures.

“I can’t wait to grow up so I can have my children,” says Hattie Belle from the backseat the afternoon before her seventh birthday.

“I think you will be a terrific mama,” I say. “I really do. If that’s something you want to do down the line.”

“I do. I can’t wait to hold my baby.”

I find myself hesitating.

“You know,” I say, “the really cool thing about having kids—when you’re old enough and ready enough—is finding out that they are their own people. Your babies come out with personalities all their own. Sometimes you find out they’re not like you at all.”

I glance in the rearview mirror. How much of our life together so far has been spent this way, my checking her reaction in the car mirror, her catching my eye?

She is listening, still, keenly.

“One thing you might want to think about…” I say.

“What?”

“You COULD get a little girl who really needed to talk about sad things. Scary things. Things that worried her. I know you don’t always like to talk about sad stuff.”

Hattie Bella considers this, assesses the possibility.

“I think, by that time,” she says, “I will probably know how to do that.”

“You think?” I ask.

“Like, by the time I’m a grownup? I think I’ll know how to talk about that stuff. The hard stuff. And talk to my baby.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m guessing you’ll know how to talk to her, then.”

“Tomorrow I’m SEVEN,” she hoots.

“I know, baby. How about that?”

“SEVEN!” she crows. She could not be more delighted. She is glistening, glowing, with almost-seven joy.

“Seven, my love. I am so glad I had you. Where would I be without you and your cuddles? Without my sweet funny secondborn baby girl?”

“Your life might be really boring,” she states matter-of-factly.

“I believe you are absolutely correct.”

“SEVEN,” she says again. “WOW.”

“Seven, baby. How about that.”

Happy Seventh, my beautiful yummy caramel truffle baby. You give me so very, very much joy. May you always know I am here to talk about that sad stuff, whenever you’re ready.

And, yes. If you’re ever a mama, you will do just fine.

So much more than just fine.

We baked brownies.

For many of you, this would not be headline news, but here at Chez Jenny, it was quite something:

1) It was my idea.

2) There was no special occasion.

3) I had all the ingredients (that includes a box of Trader Joe’s Fudge Truffle Brownie Mix, yes).

I spied the brownie mix in the back of the cupboard. I thought, Today, I will be That Mother, oh, yes.

“Ladies, come hither,” I called.

When no ladies appeared, I tried another method.

“Ladies! Come! A shocking event is about to take place!”

They wandered into the kitchen. I raised my arms like Evita.

“LADIES. WE SHALL BAKE!”

They stared at me.

“HENCEFORTH! AS IN, NOW! AS IN, WE WILL MAKE SOMETHING IN THE VICINITY OF THE APPLIANCE CALLED ‘THE OVEN’!”

They stared some more.

So I pointed at the box of brownie mix.

Their eyes widened.

“Do we…actually have…you know…the STUFF required for baking? Like, pans?” asked Sophie.

“I DO NOT KNOW, MY CHILDREN. But I feel optimistic that your father left us at least one pan. Let us search!”

They exchanged glances and folded their arms. They watched as I rummaged in the back of the bottom cupboards. Aha! An ancient amber glass pan, but not the 8 x 8 x 2 the crankypants instructions called for.

“MY CHILDREN, IT IS THE INCORRECT SIZE. Does this matter, in the world of baking? Do you know?”

“I don’t think it matters,” said Hattie B, hopefully.

I found another pan, a dingy metal one. “We can pour the mix into TWO pans!”

They squinted at me as if I were speaking in tongues.

“TWO PANS! SEE? WE SHALL BAKE.”

I clapped my hands and passed out butter sticks.

“HENCEFORTH, YOU SHALL BUTTER THE PANS! I have seen this on TV.”

“We do this with Daddy,” Hattie offered, helpfully.

“OH. Well. Yes. Then you know,” I replied.

“We know,” they chimed.

They buttered the pans. They broke eggs into a bowl while I whisked butter on the stove.

“I BAKE! THEREFORE, I ROCK! HEAR YE! YOUR MOTHER, YEA, VERILY, SHE ROCKETH THE HOUSE.”

They will remember my idiocy fondly, someday.

I poured the eggs into the creamy melted butter on the stove. I added the brownie mix. I stirred. But not fast.

No one told me baking was a competitive timed sport.

The eggs scrambled.

So I whisked the hell out of them and broke them into submission, pretending I did not just screw up the second thing I have ever attempted to bake with my children. I am not counting the Christmas Tollhouse Cookie batter. I have messed that up too. Don’t ask.

“Why are there little white bits in the chocolate?” asked the ever-astute Sophie.

“Batter. Protein. I don’t know.”

“Looks like egg,” said she.

“My goodness. It couldn’t be. No no.”

I soldiered on.

We managed to get the mix into the glass pan. None left over for the metal pan, which was buttered within an inch of its life.

“LADIES, THE MIRACLE OF BAKING.” I shoved the glass pan of brownie goop into the oven. I preheat like a champ.

We all tried to ignore the scrambled egg bits that emerged during the baking.

“Extra protein. Extra good,” I said.

They shrugged. They keep their expectations low, like their mother does. Low expectations are a gift to pass on to one’s children. It makes life so much more palatable. You should try it sometime, really. High expectations are so 90s.

“It tastes just like Domino’s lava cake,” Soph observed.

“You can have my white bits,” said HB.

“LADIES! OBSERVE! WE HAVE BAKED!” I waited.

“Thanks, Mommy.” To their credit, they actually seemed quite pleased with the entire endeavor, overall. Nice kids. Really very nice children.

Low expectations will save the world, I tell you. They keep sanity alive. How low can you go? My next tattoo.

Perfection is SO out. Trust me on this. I am a Mommy Blogger, and I endorse low expectations for all.

Me: I’m so proud of you. Your teacher said you never get caught up in the mean stuff. That even when you don’t feel like playing with someone, you say it in a nice way, that you just need some quiet time. She said you’re kind to everyone.

H: That’s because I LEARN that from someone. (playful, mysterious) Let’s seeeeee. She’s OLDER than me, and her name starts with a ‘J’ or an ‘M’, depending on what I call her. Hmmm. I wonder who it could be.

Me: Really? You feel like you’re learning kindness from me? Honest?

H: (passionate) Of course! I learn that from you all the time!

Me: Thank you so much, honey. You have no idea how much that means to a mommy. That is the nicest, most wonderful thing to hear.

[It really was.]

Sophie shows me her graded math homework. Her teacher has scrawled “Good” again and again in loopy cursive across the pages.

Fourth grade is Polygon City. Geometry smorgasbord. Line segments. Rays. Parallelograms.

I leaf through the pages. For all of her many talents and charms, she is a hilariously creative speller. Hexogram. Paralelagram. Trapiezoid. Impatient. Her newly developing cursive is stick-straight, edgy, jagged. Her loops have points.

Sometimes, I am humbled by how well I understand my elder daughter and her motivations, what makes her tick. I know I will not always feel this way, when she slips away to the dark side of the moon. I know I will hold my breath through those teen years, hoping to make contact when she circles back around, back into my greedy, mama sunlight.

She walks back into the kitchen, where she finds me grinning at her homework.

“THEY BOTH CONVEX,” I say, reading her assessment of two shapes.

“Huh?”

“THEY BOTH CONVEX,” I repeat, pointing to her hastily, carelessly scribbled sentence. She is too dreamy to check her work. She wants it done.

She chuckles.

“No ‘are’”. They both convex. You both concave. I rhombus, on Mondays.”

If this does not strike you as funny, be glad you are not my daughter.

Fortunately, she and I have the same sense of humor. She cracks up at her error.

“I like that you thought it was a verb. Gone convexing.”

“Yeah,” she laughs. “I started off thinking it was, you know, an action.”

We look at each other and burst into hysterics.

“Your spelling is hilarious,” I say. “You KNOW you have to work on your spelling, right?”

She cracks up again and leans against me. “I know. Show me what I spelled wrong.”

I point to a word that has obviously puzzled her, a word she gave up on midway through, as evidenced by a dark indecipherable scrawl at the end.

“QUADRILAETERALELAllllellllll,” I drone. “I like how you pretended like you actually knew how to spell the word, but just got messy near the end. That’s hysterical.”

Busted, she howls with laughter. “Do another one! Do another one!”

I look down. “HEX-O-GRAM. Sounds like—”

“—a cereal,” she finishes.

“YES! Nabisco Hex-O-Grams: cinnamon goodness for the geometrically inclined,” I say in my radio voice.

We die. We fall over laughing. We iz teh funneh.

At bedtime, we are still in helpless giggles. “I CONVEX TODAY,” I grunt, “BUT YESTERDAY, I CONCAVE. RHOMBUSZOIDALHEXAGRAMALLELOBUS.”

We thrash and wheeze.

“More! Do more!” she begs. One of my favorite things about Sophie is her calm sense of self, and her willingness, nearly always, to laugh at herself.

“MY POLYGON CONVEX UNTIL I KICKED IT,” I say. “NOW, IT CONCAVE.”

We are crying, we are laughing so hard. It is 10:30 and she should be asleep. But there is nothing better than this. Surely, surely, she will remember some of these nights.

“You realize,” I tell her, “that you are not going to be able to keep a straight face in math tomorrow.”

“Oh, I know. How did you learn all your voices?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve always been weird. I’m glad you don’t mind, having a weird mom.”

In answer, she snuggles into my neck, squeezes me tight. I can feel her round cheeks grinning.

She does not mind. She does not mind at all.

Thank you, Lord.