Do mothers have a sixth sense? I don’t know. I remember padding into my parents’ bedroom in the wee hours, and no matter how softly I laid my feet on the carpet or tried not to breathe–it turning into a challenge at some point–my mom would gasp awake. Everything okay?

Maybe she passed it on to me. A couple of nights ago, my eyes opened with a deep breath. I listened to the silence of a house asleep, the sounds of my sons breathing in the next room. And then, the sheets moving. Was my son groaning? I don’t remember.

It was a baby tooth of his, the one I’d haul him to the dentist for the next day. “I can’t get comfortable,” my son sleep-garbled. I offered him pain reliever, lay down beside him with my hand on his back, on those new muscles from school sports. (He used to fit inside my body.) He tossed some more, breathed deeply, then regularly. read more