I don’t know why, but I did something I almost never do — look at the profile of someone who clapped for a story of mine. Laura, you are such a gifted writer! I loved this story because I can really relate to it, but even more for your way with words and phrases and your sophisticated humor. I marked up your story with my highlights, but really, I could have done more!

You brought me back to when my youngest was a small toddler, and my girlfriend and I spent from 5pm to the time my husband came home from work in the playpen with our daughters and our manhattans! Or could it have been before 5pm? And yes, every single night at 5pm I poured myself a glass of chardonnay to take the edge off. I remember never really being present the way you described. And then six years later, I had another daughter. The stress of the two of them was pretty overwhelming for me, and by then I had graduated to having a martini every night with my husband and then sharing a bottle of wine with dinner. And I won’t leave out the after dinner drinks on the weekends.

I worried about everything just as you described, but it wasn’t sparkly candies, it was grapes — and so I cut them in half, and ungated pools at friend’s houses — so I didn’t let them go, and other parent’s driving habits, and childhood illnesses and and and ….. P.S. They are thirty-six and thirty now, and I still worry and still drink. But not every night.