Page 27

27 | Snack Attack KAITLIN

Sasha is nowhere to be found.

Judging by the photo she posted, she’s still somewhere tropical. Meanwhile, I am down two more followers.

That’s the big news in my life.

She isn’t at drop-off. She isn’t at pick-up. I know because I am at both.

You know who else is at both? Celeste. And it is both pleasing and strange to see her arrive harried at 3 p.m., answering the kids’ demands in place of greetings with a dip into her tote for whatever snacks she grabbed as she rushed out the door.

Of course, her tote is still Goyard. I’m wearing a faded canvas giveaway from a health food store in the Berkshires. Until this moment, I thought it was kind of cool. Cool enough .

The kids emerge.

Celeste takes the little one’s backpack. Sasha’s youngest, Bart. By all appearances, he is the world’s cutest five-year-old and easy as hell. Of course he is. He dances at Celeste’s feet, cheering his strawberry fruit roll-up like he has won the lottery.

In some ways, Nettie already embodies the Sasha I first met. She is pretty, precocious, too cool, with eyes that miss nothing. But she has a seriousness that her mother never had; she is not carefree.

Maybe our children don’t have that luxury. To trust the ground they stand on so entirely. Not like we did.

Not that I was ever carefree.

My own daughter, Ruby, has begun having panic attacks. No mystery there. So much change. If she understood what worried her, it would help, but instead she projects outward. She worries that a movie will be too scary; that she’ll feel awkward at a birthday party; that her goldfish might die (he will). Even if we’re out, she must say good night to both parents each evening before bed. For the first time in years, she has requested a night-light.

There’s a part of me that wants a night-light too.

But the demons in my darkness are not under my bed. They live in my head (and, apparently, in my underwear drawer on laundry days). They live on my phone. They come in the form of looped memories, of relitigated poor choices I cannot change, of revisited relationships that don’t serve me, of past slights that still feel like indignities, of other people’s self-celebratory posts I scroll through when the insomnia wins. They echo with phrases like, How did I get here? and What am I doing wrong? and Is this really me? Is this really it?

Ruby will make better choices. I’ve put all of my eggs in that basket. This is just a blip , I tell myself. The world is in a tough place. It simply has to rebound. Right?

But Bart is still small enough to be chipper, jogging to keep up with Nettie and Henry as they run ahead down the sidewalk, stopping now and then to tightrope walk the brick borders around dogwood trees. He reminds me of simpler days. Days that overwhelmed before I knew what that meant.