I’ll never forget that right after Sophie was born, my sister said to my mother, “Well, Amy will always have someone to get a pedicure with.”

I love that line.

And while it’s not always true (Sophie’s certainly not up for EVERYTHING), she’s pretty game. Yesterday afternoon I asked Annabelle if she’d like to bake some Pillsbury crescent rolls with me (Sadly, that’s one of the three “dishes” I learned how to make in school — 8th grade home ec, although I believe that roll recipe was a dessert item with icing. Still, close.)

“No,” Annabelle said. “I’ll help you with one part: eating them.”

“Sophie?”

“Yes!”

So we rolled crescent rolls. It took all of 3 minutes and was a huge success; her rolls actually turned out looking better than mine.

The cooking went so well, she wasn’t done. So we made instant pudding.

At dinner, per her promise, Annabelle ate three rolls.

(NOTE: SOPHIE’S PLAY DATE’S NAME IS SPELLED Niamh — I BOTCHED IT BELOW.)

“Hey, she’s 5 and I’m 4 and I’m bigger than her!” Neve commented, not at all unkindly.

Yes, I thought to myself, and in every way: Neve is an adorable, precocious little girl (little, though she probably DOES stand a head taller than Annabelle, as well) and Sophie’s blind date for the morning, yesterday, during the Great Play Date Experiment.

Although I’m surrounded with little girls on many days, someone I manage to forget how advanced a typical 4 or 5 year old girl can be. Neve could hold her own at happy hour, any day.

“You ARE bigger!” I said to Neve. “Sophie’s pretty short.”

That was the only difference Neve noted about Sophie, at least, the only one l I heard. They did have different likes and dislikes: Neve wanted to play Wii, while Sophie — though glad to try bowling — was still more interested in an old Elmo puzzle she found in Erin’s den.

I don’t know how to spell Neve, so I’m guessing — and I chose this spelling since it echoes “Eve”. Sophie got all excited when I told her we were going to Neve’s house. “Eve! Eve! WALL-E!” she said.

WALL-E (and his girlfriend, or girl ‘bot, Eve) made a big impression on Sophie. Me too. Definitely my favorite movie of the summer. Okay the only one I’ve seen, but still.

I’d love to tell you that like WALL-E and Eve, Neve took Sophie by the hand, into her world, and showed her around, fascinating her, rendering the two inseparable.

Not quite. I’m not sure Sophie would follow Neve into outer space — or vice versa – but have you ever seen a first play date like that? I would have been creeped out.

This date was darn good: The girls did disappear into the back of the house for a good five minutes at a time. Erin made them a tea party with petit fours and strawberries (she even cut the tops off, something I have to admit I almost never do, bad mom) and juice boxes.

We grown ups sat on the couch and drank coffee and talked grown up talk in between fielding the many requests that come from two little girls playing a room away from their moms, and Erin explained that her favorite friend’s family, growing up, included a little girl with Down syndrome.

“We loved Becky,” Erin said. “That was just normal for us.”

We agreed the next play date will be at my house (I hope the therapists forgive me, that’s not part of the “rules” here) and I knew the morning was a success when I couldn’t drag Sophie out the door with the true news that we were headed next to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

(And if you don’t believe me about Sophie and CEC, read this:

http://www.austinmama.com/badmomsix.htm

and this:

http://www.austinmama.com/badmomeight.htm)

Last night I made the girls an extra bubbly bath, and forced them both to endure the worst possible torture: hair combing. Sophie negotiated some extra TV time, and grabbed a book she insisted I read after the brush was relinquished and her hair braided.

She was obsessed with one book, called “Countdown to the First Day of School”.

“New school, new school!” she told me, offering her own special pronounciation of her new teacher’s name, Ms. X for these purposes. (Actually, I can’t bet on that — the teacher cards are supposed to be in the mail Monday, I hear. Gulp. We could end up with Ms. Y or Ms. Z.)

It IS the countdown to school, but that wasn’t why I was spit shining her. It’s taken most of the summer, but Sophie has her first official, therapy-inspired play date this morning.

After I placed my “ad” on the blog, the friend of a friend emailed to offer her four year old daughter’s services. I’ve admired this woman from afar but never had the chance to really sit down and talk with her (and I’m not just saying that because she’ll likely read this!) and we both decided this would be a nice opportunity.

Plus she admitted that her younger daughter gets short shrift in the play date department. It was an incredibly kind thing to say, even if it’s not true. Actually, other moms who’ve offered up their kids for the Great Sophie Play Date Experiment have said the same thing.

So maybe it’s a second kid thing, not a kid with Down syndrome thing?

Nah, with Sophie it’s the latter. I know it is. And I know that at this late date, I’ve already blown my mandate from Sally-Ann and Dorcas, the taskmaster therapists, to socialize Sophie before kindergarten starts August 4.

Hey, I blew puppy school, too.

But in a little while I’ll get Sophie up and find us both cute outfits and we’ll head to our play date. Wish us luck.

I watched it.

Turned out, it was a very old tape (much heavier than current VHS tapes, which I guess are lighter because they’re getting ready to go POOF altogether, followed by DVDs, leaving me screwed) with Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” taped after the 1992 documentary “Educating Peter,” which a friend had given me — she found when she was cleaning out her old tapes.

The tracking was awful, so I kept having to look away, but to be honest, I would have been looking  away, no matter what. The documentary won an Academy Award, so it’s not that the piece is poorly done — to the contrary, I was impressed with the head-on approach. The “nut graph,” as we say in journalism, was simple in a good way: Federal law has mainstreamed kids with disabilities. They are in our public schools. Here is the example of how one kid affected his third grade classroom.

I was also impressed that, at the outset, the filmmakers said they were not taking a political position — that some people liked mainstreaming, others did not. But curiously, at the end, they put up a big fat caveat: a black and white typed message saying that a. not all kids with Down syndrome have behavioral problems like Peter’s. And b. that all kids can benefit from the mainstreaming experience.

So I guess there was some pressure, after the movie came out. I wasn’t at all surprised about the former comment, since it’s what kept me looking away. I’ve got to say (and this whole “Down syndrome Box” thing won’t work if I’m not honest — who knows, maybe it won’t work, anyway, but I’m going to try, at the risk of making enemies with the likes of Peter’s mom) that if I’d seen this documentary when Sophie was a baby, I would have tossed myself out the highest window I could have found.

Ray walked in when the movie started. He tried in vain to fix the tracking. When he saw what it was he left. As you’ll recall, he didn’t care one bit for “Graduating Peter,” the follow-up documentary.

“The kid has ADD, too,” he said, as he hightailed it back to the kitchen.

I am quite certain that Peter is a lovable, wonderful, productive member of society. And I can’t speak to his high school years, as I didn’t watch that one and am not sure I will. But I can say that he was a freaking handful for his third grade teacher, a woman who appeared from the movie to have absolutely no experience with special needs kids. It was hard to say whether there was an aide in the classroom. There could have been, but if there was, no mention was made.

Instead, the short film is presented as a year filled with, basically, the task of getting third graders to police this kid. They did a good job, I have to admit, but they did it was so much compassion, grace and maturity (onscreen, at least, and that even includes the “uglier” moments, which the filmmakers, to their credit, did put in) that I have to wonder (sorry, Carrie Bradshaw) just how much the fact that cameras were in the classroom had to do with the experience.

That’s the problem. There’s no way to truly document the experience your kid (special needs or otherwise) will have in the classroom. I learned this when I tried to volunteer in Sophie’s public preschool room. The Amazing Ms. Janice wouldn’t even let me in the door — and for good reason, I learned, the morning I did visit. My presence changed everything. Cameras — even with the filmmakers’ best intentions — changed everything, too. I’d bet on it. Peter was one challenging third grader, and everything I know in my being tells me those kids acted differently toward him because they were onstage.

Or maybe I’m just a cynical bitch. That is definitely a possibility.

I cringed more than once, watching, because although the third grade Peter is what Ray and I would most unkindly label “low functioning” (Sophie, I think, does many things better already, at 5) I saw my daughter in Peter, again and again. I’d piled my lap with magazines to read while I watched, in case exactly that happened, so I peered from around the pages of Real Simple and Bust to see Peter say, “Soooorrrrry” just like Sophie; to see him hug (inappropriately) his classmates and refuse to let go, just like Sophie. When he turned his head to the side, I saw Sophie. When he threw himself on the floor and said, “Sleepy!” I saw Sophie.

I watched that movie and I saw Sophie disrupting that third grade classroom and even though Peter/Sophie did well at the end and even won a prize, I saw my daughter hopelessly behind in academics, with no “real” friends — a mascot of a classroom of kids that pulled together to help out the f-ed up child tossed in with them.

Perhaps not the best thing to watch, three weeks before kindergarten starts. I think I’ll dig up the first season of “Life Goes On” for my next installment.

The double messy bun has turned out to be such a big hit that Sophie requests the ‘do regularly. This morning Annabelle (who normally puts her own hair back in a low ponytail, unless it’s post-bath, in which case she’ll grudgingly let me comb her hair out and braid it) requested the same.

I was able to snap a quick picture before she disappeared to look in the bathroom mirror and yell, “NO!”

Annabelle has the hair I want — rather, she has the hair I had (or close, at least, mine wasn’t quite as good) before it was butchered into a shag when I was 4. That was my mom’s doing, but I have to take the blame for the ensuing styles — all of which sucked, particularly the Farrah look at my bat mitzvah, til I finally learned to leave my hair alone, as an adult. In high school I always admired the hair of a girl named Alyce Conti — it was long and thick and wavy, she just let it be, no layers or bangs or hair dryers, she was a good decade ahead of her time — and years later I realized I could have had something pretty close. (Not quite, that woman had a boatload of hair, but still, I could have done a fairly good imitation and perhaps not been such a loser. I firmly believe hair texture has a lot to do with happiness. I once wrote a piece all about curly hair — Sophie’s lack thereof, to be precise. Crap, I can’t find it. I’ll track it down and post it.)

Annabelle has Alyce Conti’s hair. She doesn’t need messy buns or bangs or even a brush. She pulled the messy buns out, grabbed her huge hunk of hair (and I do mean hunk, I’m scared to imagine the snarls underneath, though I admit they give her body!) and pulled it back into a simple bun.

Gorgeous. But those messy buns were pretty darn cute, particularly if you’re part of the Star Wars set. (This one’s for you, Sawyer.)

I rolled over this morning and noticed it on the floor, an old VHS tape, “Educating Peter” scribbled on the label.

I really should shove that in the box, I thought, rolling back the other way to avoid morning and the inevitable ouslaught in the wake of a vacation.

Or, I suppose, I could watch it.

Last summer — or maybe it was two summers ago — I started this collection. I was at an impasse with writing about Sophie, and when I find it hard to write I always fall back reporting (old trick, when your paycheck depends on your ability to produce journalism or some semblance). So I started gathering material in the form of any and all pop culture references to Down syndrome.

I bid on all kinds of things on eBay — dolls made to look like they had DS, and “tintype” photos from the early 20th century, of beautifully dressed children (always children, I guess no one lived to adulthood, or was photographically desirable by the time they reached it) with DS.

I didn’t win any of those, but I did wind up with a box of DVDs, VHS tapes, books, magazines and other stuff. My memory’s a little hazy, because I haven’t really opened the box since I started the collection.

It taunts me, from under a cabinet in my bedroom, and a few weeks ago I put the cardboard box inside a plastic Rubbermaid. Sort of like wearing two condoms, I guess. OK, the truth is that I’m scared of that box. Inside (as far as I recall) are the first season of “Life Goes On” (the infamous show starring that guy named Corky) and a lot of childrens books about DS I should probably show Annabelle and a lot of quasi-educational stuff I guess I should read.

But my coping mechanism (one of them, anyway) since Sophie was born has been to live in the moment with her, rather than look beyond her to others with DS, for clues. It’s tempting, which is why I stare at Megan, the bag girl at Safeway, and watch the other little girl at Sophie’s future school, the super smart girl who’s a year older.

And I keep telling myself I’ll open that box. Part of the reason for starting this blog was to force myself to start writing about the contents, item by item, rather than just amassing them. Anyhow, now the box is full, so I’ve got to do something. Start a new one?

Earlier this summer, a dear friend offered me an old copy of “Educating Peter” (a seminal documentary from a while ago, long ago enough that when the kid — portrayed in this doc as a grade schooler — finished high school, they made “Graduating Peter,” which Ray made the mistake of watching, at my urging, when Sophie was very young. It’s depressing; I hear EP is very good, though) and I took it, telling her I’d put it in my box. In a hurry, I left it in a pile next to the box, behind some suitcases.

Those suitcases went on vacation, revealing the tape. Maybe I’ll watch it, to avoid opening the box to try to cram it in.

Or maybe I’ll get on eBay and see what’s for sale.

It was a mistake to try to make dinner tonight.

It’s not like I cook often. And we’d just gotten back from the beach, so surely I had an excuse. But Ray’d clearly gotten into the habit, over the last week, of eating more than Ritz crackers and Lorna Doones in the evening span Americans call the “dinner hour”.

He even offered to grill. OK, it’s like 117 degrees out, and humid. No way. I might let him vacuum the house and I don’t hesitate to dump his dry laundry on his half of the bed (hey, he does the same thing to me!) but I can’t bear the thought of him standing over the hot BBQ. Particularly after he’s mowed the lawn.

(In my own defense, I’m all in favor of a lawn guy. Or gal. Ray refuses. His parents actually made him do chores, growing up, and the ethic stuck. Sort of.)

Back to dinner. Ray made a long shopping list, then split for the rock gym with the girls before I got home with the loot. I dragged $260 worth of groceries into the house (the Safeway clerk stared at me when it was time to pay, then volunteered that he personally shops at Fry’s because it’s cheaper — I am not making that up, I swear someone is taping me for some fucked up reality show where they see how long it takes to drive a middle aged mom over the edge) and put them away, pre-heated the oven, then tossed a flank steak into one Pyrex pan and some potatoes and onion (hey, at least I cut the onion and washed the potatoes) in the other.

Now, normally I marinate the flank steak in some balsamic vinegar and orange juice, but it was already past 6 (did I forget to mention that I snuck out for a pedicure, before Safeway?) so there was no time. Getting the groceries put away was a garganutuan feat. Really, I should have just driven through El Pollo Loco. I sprinkled on some salt, pepper and minced garlic and left it at that. Of course I then overcooked the steak. I don’t want to get anyone sick, you know.

I called to Ray that dinner was ready, but he couldn’t hear me over the din of the vacuum. He’s not OCD, he just happens to own cats that bring things into the house. While we were at the beach, the inventory included at least three geckos and a large bird, and also the mangled baby bird Annabelle spotted under the kitchen table after we’d been home for several hours.

I served the girls. They were focused on Elmo’s World.

YES, I break the cardinal rule. I let my kids watch TV while they eat. I know. I suck. There’s nothing worse. Call CPS. Please.

I thought I cut the meat into bite-sized pieces, but I guess not, because I noticed both girls were sort of gnawing at hunks of the flank steak. OK, so it wasn’t my finest effort, I thought, as I sawed into my own piece. But at least it tasted pretty good. Then Ray sat down with his plate, and started chewing. 

“Istheresomethingwrongwiththismeat?” he asked, letting a chewed piece dangle from his lips. I looked up. Truly, it takes a lot to disgust me. But that did it.

“It’s THAT bad?” I responded. “It’s so bad you have to spit it back out? I watched the butcher cut the meat! It’s good!”

He sucked the bite in.

“I’m sorry! Realy I am!” he said, sensing a catastrophe — or a lifetime of hummus and pita chips for dinner. “My sense of taste is screwed up from my allergies. I can’t taste a thing, after mowing the lawn.”

He sniffed convincingly.

“It’s not the best flank steak I’ve ever made, OK?” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to marinate it.”

Somewhere along the way, Ray slipped away from the dinner table. “I’m on the phone with my mom! I’ll be right back!” he called from another room, when I accused him of abandoning his plate.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Annabelle quietly getting up from her seat and running to the garbage can. She leaned over and spit.

“I couldn’t chew it,” she said, looking sad.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” I said. I looked at Sophie.

She was staring at Elmo, and she was chewing. And chewing. And chewing. At one point, she actually took a piece out of her mouth and looked at it, then put it back in and kept chewing.

“Can I be done?” Annabelle asked. “I want to watch something else in the living room.”

She left a plateful of meat, minus the two pieces she spit out in the garbage.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Sophie, how is it?”

“AWESOME!” she said, chewing.

We both cleaned our plates. 

As we were getting up from the table, I noticed a tiny ant making its way across Sophie’s yellow tee shirt.

TO BE CONTINUED.

I hate the last day of vacation, the exquisite pain of sitting on the beach for the last time, the last morning latte, the last evening vodka tonic. Long ago, my sister and I worked the last day lather into a fine art, and at this point I’d almost rather not go at all than experience the agony of knowing it’s over for another year.

Almost.

I gobbled half my book this afternoon on the beach, while no one was looking, and another hunk on the couch while the kids watched Madagascar. It’s a great book — Jesus Land, a memoir, spectactular writing — but the worst thing I could have read on a day I was hiding from reality. (Truly depressing, engrossing stuff. I looked up from it at one point, surrpised to find myself in a room of kids wielding Magic Markers and Cheetos.) But I was determined to get some reading in; old habits die hard.

It’ll never be the same as it was, this vacation, pre-kids. As I write, Ray and our brother in law Jonathan are discussing that very topic in the kitchen. “The kids are older this year,” Jonathan said. “I think that’s why we got to do more stuff we wanted to do.”

(Speak for yourselves, dudes!)

I’m waiting for the year Sophie will be independent. Scratch that. She’s very independent. I mean RESPONSIBLY independent, like her cousin Kate, who’s 6 weeks older and light years ahead. Kate can climb the stairs alone to go to the room to pee. She can find her way back from the pool, run down the beach without getting lost or making inappropriate friends. She holds her own with Annabelle in a way Sophie surely does not and I secretly worry never will.

More exquisite pain, watching the cousins play.

We’ve come so far from Sophie’s first year on the beach. I still can’t believe we brought her then, complete with a feeding tube up the nose and a pump that fed her automatically all night long, beeping loudly to announce it had run dry. Each time we hooked up the pump, we had to push air up the tube to make sure it hadn’t slipped into her lung, where it would drown her.

This year was the best, so far. Both girls played so well on the beach, splashing in the waves with confidence I’ve never shown. And Sophie’s doing so well. I really can’t complain; or I shouldn’t. She’s next to me right now, playing charades. Not bad.

But she did require a lot of attention this trip, enough that it was necessary to bring our dear friend Abbie along as a nanny. And even Abbie, the most energetic, mature 13 year old I’ve ever known — who loves Sophie about as much as any human being can love another one — grew weary with the constant pressure of caring for our little wind-up toy.

And tomorrow, it’s back to reality for real — way less than a month to kindergarten. The countdown begins.

Tonight, time was still suspended. I ignored everyone else’s efforts at packing and stared at the beach, memorizing it, as we downed our last meal, a mixed grill, to put it politely: a week’s worth of leftovers, all thrown on the BBQ.

The gods had a good time at our expense — high tide was timed just wrong, sending sand flies zooming past our heads for the whole meal. Last night we stayed out way past dark; Ray played the guitar; it was magical.

Tonight, it was itchy.

It’s time to go home.

It’s official. Our family is switching over from the high five to the fist bump.

I’ll admit it, this decision was made after I read last week’s NYT magazine and learned that William Safire has noticed the fist bump, thus dragging it into the public lexicon in a way I just can’t ignore.

Plus, I do love Obama. I’m still regretting not bringing the kids to see him, last time he was in Phoenix.

And finally, I’m happy to do away with the high five.

“You know what I think of whenever I see Sophie high five?” I asked Ray this afternoon.

“Yep.”

No need to say it. We were both thinking of an article we remember too well, must have been at least a year ago, in one of those special supplements the Times puts out — this one on education, and I swear, we don’t just sit around reading high brow newspapers. I am proud of my subscriptions to People, Bust and Domino.

This article was about mainstreaming, specifically, a young adult woman (could have been a man, but I’m fairly sure it was a girl) with Down syndrome, who insisted on high fiving everyone on the bus every day when she got on. The writer made sure to note that while cute on the surface, this was a source of annoyance to the high five recipients.

I don’t fault the writer at all; it’s the kind of detail I treasure in my own writing and the writing I edit. But in this case, it made me wince, and I do think about it every time Sophie high fives — which must be half a dozen times a day, easy.

The high five is a big deal to Sophie, a way of connecting, the sign of a job well done. She does it with gusto, so hard it hurts, coming from her teeny hand. I don’t want to get rid of the idea, even if it does hit the pit of my stomach every time.

So we’ll do the fist bump instead. At least we’ll be cool. And instead of thinking of that sad article every time, I’ll think of how my sister and brother in law trash-talked the phrase “fist bump” til we all laughed so hard we couldn’t breath.

In years past, I’ve measured the success of a beach trip in books — as in, the number consumed while sitting prone on a lounge chair, covered (in more recent years) with towels, Diet Coke at the ready.

But this year I have yet to crack a page, and it’s already Day 5. I’m not even sure where Jesusland and Water for Elephants have gone.

That’s okay. I think I’ve decided to start measuring my success in reverse.

On this trip (someone said earlier today it’s the 24th time we’ve come to this room, overlooking the ocean, to blow several weeks’ vacation cash in a single week; I’ve missed a few over the years — to backpack in Europe, to sulk, to have a baby, to appease my husband who asked, “Why the hell are we going there AGAIN?”) I always break some of my personal rules, rules even more important than “read as many books as possible on a vacation”.

For example, I ignore the fact that for all practical purposes, we’re staying at a country club — a place where you rarely see an African American or anyone who looks like they might not “fit”, a place I’d normally pooh pooh as not my kind of place. The beach here is just too big an allure, rumored to be the only private stretch in California (these parts, anyway), where cabana boys and girls bring you cocktails and salads and umbrellas and ask if you need anything else.

What can I say? I’m weak.

The other rule I break has to do with the beach itself. I’m terrified of the ocean and everything in it (this either had to do with a rubber shark or a gamey fish stick, when I was very young, it’s a family debate as to the origin of the phobia) and yet again, the allure of the beach (moist sand, not totally dry, but with nothing in it like stinky seaweed or, god forbid, anything alive – taken care of each morning by the aforementioned friendly staff) is too much. I’m simply a hypocrite in too many ways to count.

I do take care to look down when I walk on the beach, lest anything remotely ocean-ish touch my feet. Last night I was glad for that habit, though not for the usual reason.

After we BBQ’ed on the sand, after the last s’more had been eaten and the sunset watched, Annabelle and I walked down the beach, kindly lit by the again aforementioned staff, to prolong expensive beach days.

“Hey!” I said. “Look at that. What do you think it is? Why don’t you pick it up?”

It was a small disc, perfectly round, sitting on the moist, smooth sand.

“It looks alive,” Annabelle said. “I don’t want to touch it.”

Determined to not show fear, I scooped the thing up in a handful of sand, careful both not to touch it and not to let Annabelle know I was completely grossed out.

Ray confirmed it was a sand dollar. I’d never seen one on the beach (of course, I’d never really looked, so who knows) and everyone agreed it was impressive. Annabelle was thrilled and I was delighted we’d shared the moment of discovery.

Until….

“Um, I think it’s still alive,” Ray said, staring down at the thing, now resting on the reservation card from the dinner table.

SO? I thought to myself. I didn’t say anything.

“Oh,” Annabelle said.

“You know, Annabelle,” Ray said gently, “you and I could go out and throw it back in the ocean, and it could live. We don’t have to. But we could. It’s your choice.”

She thought about it for a while, then took Ray’s hand, and they went outside.

I told Annabelle she’d have good karma. (Not sure about mine.)

This morning, Annabelle and I went for another walk. We found several pieces of (definitely dead) sand dollars, and even a real quarter, which we placed in the hot pink hat Sophie refused to wear. I called over to Annabelle at one point, excited by another hunk of sand dollar I’d spotted, but she wouldn’t come. She was calling to me, even more excitedly.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, COME HERE!!!!!!!!”

So I did. And there on the sand was a teeny tiny starfish.

“Is it still alive, Mommy?” she asked, really hopeful.

Screw karma.

“No, sweetie, it’s dead,” I answered. And I scooped it up with a generous handful of sand between the starfish and me, and carefully placed it in the hat, where it sits now, in our kitchenette.

No one could decided (in the moments before its return to the sea) whether to name the sand dollar Sandy or Dolly, but the starfish was immediately dubbed Twinkle.

“Did you put it in water?” Ray asked when he called, just done with a hike, and I told him about it.

“No,” I said, “it’s dead.” (Well, it is now, I thought.)

I confessed to my mom.

“You did the right thing,” she said. “It’s not like the thing has a mother who cares about it.”

I love my mom.