Ruben came out silent and purple. Something about his C-section birth or my Lexapro made him take a minute to wake up. That minute felt like 47 years, and it started us off on shaky ground. I worried that Ruben was too small, too red, too loud, too quiet. Was his head the right shape or the wrong shape? Was he too hot or too cold? Everything, with Rube, I fretted about.

It was for all these reasons that I thought it made sense he was giving me the middle finger. One of the first places I took Ruben alone was to see the sailboats on Lake Michigan, if only so I was not the only person who felt like I was out to sea. Even though this phrase should be out to lake. I thought he was unintentionally flipping me off because he wanted a mom who knew what she was doing, and little did he know at the time, so did I.

How come I could look at his brother Leon and not make big, huge eyes when he had a fever, a bump, or a bruise? There was no rushing Leon to the doctor, or to his grandpa who is also a doctor, to check on something that was, of course, nothing. Ruben was giving me the finger for the thousandth time because I interrupted his programs or his game of banging a pan. I interrupted because of an anxiety in my chest that only quells by getting to know someone and settling into being their mom. It took Ruben a minute to wake up when he was born. It took me about two and a half years.

This past weekend Ruben turned three, and he got very mad because he wanted to change his face paint to match his brother’s. He collapsed his little body into mine and came running to me because I was the only person who would understand how frustrating it is when you decide you want Pikachu face paint, but then your big brother gets Raichu face paint, and suddenly everything you always wanted has changed. I get that because I know Ruben now. I know Ruben likes rice cakes and long-stick cookies aka peuroettes, and that his colds are usually backwards; they start as coughs and then morph into runny noses. I know he is extremely picky about his clothing and wants to be treated like a big boy, unless he is tired and wants to be carried; then he will remind me he is not a baby, but he is just a little guy. Ruben points across the room with one finger when I come to pick him up and runs over and shouts Mommy. That’s my guy.

He’s also a costume kid.

I’ve been waxing poetic about my life here. The tree with the beautiful bark I pass on my walk each day. Juliana, the cashier at my grocery store, whose lane I always wait for because I want to hear about her weekend plans. The way the light hits my sister’s face when she appears in the window of my front door. Moving, ugh. The pits.

There’s an exercise I do on the Pilates reformer: one foot on the platform, one foot on the carriage. The instructor tells me to push the carriage away while keeping the other foot planted. I loathe this exercise. It looks deceptively easy, possibly even fun, and yet it feels like my inner thighs are being ripped apart. That’s what this summer feels like.

The boys have been sleeping in my bed when their dad travels for work. It’s awful and also delicious. (We are overhauling bedtime the moment we move, if only so they aren’t still sleeping with me when they’re sixty.) When I wake in the middle of the night, I stare at their heads and imagine our new life: what our walks will look like, where we’ll buy our groceries, how their little feet will push their scooters up the big steep hills. Anxiety wells up in my chest, and I hear my husband’s reminder, the one he offers whenever I get nervous, which is everyday: anxiety can feel a lot like excitement. The body doesn’t always know the difference. He’s right.

This week, about a month before his sixth birthday, Leon announced he wanted to stop sucking his two fingers his preffered method of soothing since he was 6 months old. “You can absolutely try,” I told him, tears forming immediately. I worried about him giving up his comfort in the middle of such a big transition. We don’t get that many creature comforts, kid. If you need it, use it. But that’s probably more for me. I need the creature comforts more than he does.

If anyone wants a space tent or an indoor pirate ship, let me know.

A wrapper from the Minecraft gummies I caved and purchased while solo parenting, which will torment my kids all summer because there are none left.

A snack cup of melted chocolate chips that a garage mouse may have gotten into, but that the kids will lick in a moment of desperation.

A half-empty, sun-baked water bottle.

One shirt from one brother and a pair of shorts from the other, neither of which could form an outfit.

Half of The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

The remnants of a spaceship.

Two Lego pieces my kids refer to as special treasures when their cousin asks to play with one, even though they were trash yesterday.

Nine leaves from the neighbor’s tree and one small stick.

A single winter mitten.

Mommy’s credit card.

Fossilized Cheerios and an ant colony.

What are your summer must-haves!?

• Both have a deep and abiding love of cheese. Italy leans wine and cheese; Wisconsin leans beer and cheese.

• Italy has gelato and Wisconsin has custard.

• Both should be sponsored by Lactaid.

• Both have, at certain points in history, been dangerous for Jews — Italy because of WWII, Wisconsin because of the dairy.

• Both are home to a Lake Como.

• Both are grand purveyors of sausage, and frankly, I’ll take a good brat with sauerkraut over the finest prosciutto any day.

• Both have, at certain points in history, shown an alarming tolerance for fascism.

Happy Fourth! Back next week for more. (Also, if you are in the area the Mars Resort has a mean Friday Fish Fry.)

When I first started writing, I peddled my stories like a confident newsboy on a red bicycle, certain that everyone would want to read them, run them, and success was just one house away. As it turns out, putting your words out into the world is difficult, and getting them published is even more so. The one thing you’re really committing to is a lifetime of rejection. Amidst the rejection, you still have to believe in yourself enough to keep going. And sometimes things happen that make belief feel a lot like delusion.

Over the weekend, I found out that the pilot I’ve been working on for several years didn’t advance in a competition I had entered and told many people I didn’t think I’d get into. (See above.) I checked my phone for one second during Father’s Day dinner with my husband’s whole family, saw an email come through, quickly scanned it, and felt my throat fall to my butt and my dreams to the floor. I put my phone away and went to get an extra piece of Lou Malnati’s pizza.

When we got home from dinner, I was still licking my wounds, debating giving up my entire writing career and just keeping my thoughts to myself instead of putting them on the internet. Just then, my little guy came waddling down the hall and finagled his way into my bed. He lay his head on my shoulder and sucked his thumb, twirling the corner of his sleep sack the way he does when he’s winding down. I decided to ask him what I should do, hoping for one of those moments where kids prove wiser than we expect.

“Ruben, I entered a story I wrote in a contest, and I didn’t win. Should I keep writing stories?”

He looked at me and thought about it, “No. Can you read me someone else’s book?”

I nodded. This was exactly how I wanted the interaction to go.

After he fell asleep, I texted my best friend, who reminded me that the timing of this contest never felt quite right, and that while she’s too cool to believe in “meant to be,” she knew there was a purpose to all of this.

I’m still coming back from the rejection. But I did show up here today, and I’ll say this: sharing your words with others is one of the most humbling things you can do, especially when those words are personal. If you have tips on getting through a big rejection, I’m all ears.

In the meantime, here is the best rejection of my career so far in response to an essay I wrote about my mother’s tragic death.

And with that, I’ll keep coming back for more.

Every formative memory of my childhood happened there. It’s my favorite place on earth, not because it’s fancy or strikingly beautiful, though it is, but because it’s haunted. Haunted by the people I love who aren’t here anymore. My Grandpa Joe lives in the couch cushions and the workbench in the garage. My Grandma Eileen, the kitchen, specifically the stove. My mom, the second bedroom on the first floor, where she used to take long summer naps after a dip in the river and a bike ride.

One of the great pains of losing people you love, especially when you have small kids who never met them, is that they don’t get to know them. The next best thing is Ruben falling asleep in the exact spot on the couch where my grandpa used to nap as his WWII shows blared on the television. Or Leon playing in the closet where my grandma kept her bejeweled dressing gowns and gold lamé slippers, the ones she wore to make us feinkochens —Yiddish for omelet. Or me, taking a bike ride down the same path where my mom once rollerbladed into a deer, and feeling, for a second, like we’re all back together.

It can feel strange to talk about dead people to children. Some people are squeamish about it. But I’ve endured enough loss that I don’t have a choice — I have to get comfortable telling these stories, and so do my kids, with hearing about them. I find the easiest way to resurrect someone is through the small, ordinary memories. Last week, I took the boys on a walk to forage for raspberries and wildflowers, on the road I used to walk with my mom, and I taught them the old line she taught me: “Leaves of three, let them be.” So they wouldn’t get poison ivy. Then, like she always did, I recounted the great poison ivy outbreak of her childhood.

I never thought I'd be the kind of person who's comforted by ghosts. But here we are, all of us, rash-free.

The exact spot where my twin and I lived during our youth.

You give him: A new wallet. He wants: The time to finish uploading his license to his Apple Wallet, so he no longer has to carry things around. Do not rush him. This is important. While we’re at it, let him wear the shorts with the seven large pockets. He loves those.

You give him: Garrett Leight sunglasses. He wants: To wear the free ones he got at a tech convention with wooden sides and a name like Flashpoint inscribed on them, without finding them in the dress-up bin or, worse, the garbage.

You give him: Slip-on vintage Vans. He wants: To wear his shoes with the wide toe box to dinner. The wide toe box is non-negotiable. He would also like you to consider your own foot health and stop wearing those ballet flats.

You give him: Fancy socks. He wants: Respect for his socks with holes in them. The hole has not yet reached the full heel. They are still good. He will tell you when they are not good.

You give him: A subscription to The Economist. He wants: To read Twitter on his phone in peace without comments on his algorithm.

You give him: A meat thermometer. He wants: For you to trust that he is a man, and men know meat. If he says it’s done, it’s done. He has a system. It’s instinctual.

You give him: A $4,000 lounge chair and ottoman for the new house in San Francisco. He wants: You to return it.

You give him: A minimalist teapot. He wants: For you to embrace the “there’s nothing wrong with this one” mentality. There is nothing wrong with this one. There has never been anything wrong with any of them. You are the problem. You have always been the problem.

You give him: A card. He wants: For you to be really excited about his sleep data, especially if it is 89% or above. He has worked very hard on that 89%. He went to bed at 9:40 on a Saturday for that 89%.

What he would love most of all is a table he can put his feet up on comfortably, a television at an appropriate eye height, and for you to be just as excited about the circadian rhythm lightbulbs he installed in the bathroom and not mad that, for most of the day, it is impossible to do your makeup or see your face in proper lighting.

Ideal room design for most heterosexual dads.

The necklace, it turns out, goes perfectly with my “fun beige” sweater. Yes, that’s about as fun as I get. I purchased it from a lovely seller named Memorie, who hails from Arkansas, and it shipped quickly. As soon as it arrived, I wore it to pick up at my son’s school and then dinner at my twin sister’s house, and even though I got food poisoning from some bad tofu I had eaten earlier in the day, it didn’t matter because everyone loved the fish. This continued at the farmers market, a neighborhood block party, my older son’s school, and the grocery store. Even my writing coach, Autumn, loved it via Zoom. When I told her about its unifying way of bringing people together, she told me about how she’d seen Garrison Keillor earlier in the week at a show, and how when he made the audience sing “America the Beautiful” and she sang the lyrics, “And crown thy good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea!” she teared up because it had been so long since she had felt amongst her fellow Americans.

So naturally, I suggested she get the fish because it really also seems to bring people together in this way. While I don’t have some great long diatribe for you this week about life, I really recommend buying a statement necklace for the summer, and this one is a great place to start.

Have a lovely week!

I’m doing this with Chicago right now, and I am not proud of it.

I have a case of criminal amnesia. I can’t seem to remember that a year ago I was the one suggesting we’d probably move somewhere else, acting as if it would never be a big deal, and I’d be totally okay with it because I’d done it before. And just like last time, it would be a grand adventure. I’ve forgotten that I used to walk the streets of my neighborhood imagining my life here forever, and think, is this it? Now that San Francisco is real and two months away, that woman is gone. She has been replaced by someone who cries at the sight of her own block. How beautiful it all is. How much I love the weird candy shop just two blocks away with the best dark chocolate ice cream bars hidden in the back freezer, and the pet shop owner who grilled hot dogs and gave them out for free on Monday — and while it was gross to think that somewhere in the pet shop he has a grill and prepared food on it, and that it was absolutely not up to code, it was the kind of thing that makes you wax poetic to the point where I’m still thinking about it this morning. Ugh.

Yesterday I was pushing my sons in their wagon through our neighborhood in seventy-five degree weather, which, if you know Chicago, you understand is essentially a mean trick designed to make you forget even the coldest of winter days. We passed a few of our favorite stop-and-chat neighbors, all of them lamenting that they’d seen the for-sale sign in our front yard. To which I responded, I know, I know.

The leaves had never been so green, the light never so golden. And then, just when you thought Chicago was done showing off, we walked past a corner bar we’d passed a million times — always closed, always dark — with its door propped open. The owner waved us in like he’d been expecting us, after my boys shouted that they smelled popcorn. He handed them popcorn, and just as I went to reach into my bag to get some cash, he waved my hand away and slid a PBR across the bar to me, and even though it was warm and tasted just like a PBR, I wanted to cry.

A wave of sadness washed over me so strong it almost knocked me over. How am I leaving a place I love this deeply. I have no answer, really, only that I know this is exactly the kind of love that only comes the hard way.

Looks like we’re on set of the Bear, which is shot in my neighborhood.

But here’s the thing: the internet has never had a blister from a plastic shoe on a hot summer’s day. It’s never felt the searing burn in your upper heel while you’re trying to take a long walk and smell the lilacs but you can’t because your foot is sweating and rubbing so vigorously against the recycled hemp, which is just a term to make you feel like a good person while wearing plastic-feeling shoes, that a bloody indent has formed and you wonder what idiot bought you these shoes and then you realize you willingly bought them because the internet told you to.

Plain and simple, I can’t be trusted to go online anymore. I feel like I must be vigilant against all the recommendations coming my way, lest I, too, succumb to the rubber garden clogs and live to regret it. I also don’t have a Dutch doll or French mom aesthetic — I could never pull them off. I am the woman who wears some version of the same outfit every day, with sneakers, because I have a bunion. I’m that age now.

Let’s be clear about what these really are: shoes that make it look like you’re from the 1800s and at least one of your family members has passed from tuberculosis, or that you have just come across the Atlantic on a steamship where you rode in steerage from Minsk and arrived at Ellis Island to be poked and prodded and sent on your way into a foreign land, or that you spend your days with Ina Garten trimming hydrangeas when you know you don’t. Simply put, you don’t need them. You meaning me, I am talking to myself here, and you, dear reader.

That’s all I have to share. In addition to not purchasing these shoes this week, I am also constantly telling my children to “PUT YOUR TOYS AWAY” and “WE’RE TRYING TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE WE DON’T LIVE HERE” as we show our house this week and try to sell it. I wish I could turn them into little statues — if you have any tips for doing so, let me know.

I have a bone to pick with my mom. I met with my favorite astrologer, Meredith, in February, and she told me the veil between the spirit world and the mortal world would be paper-thin in April. I was really banking on some signs — or at least an encounter with my dead mom. But April came and went without anything. Meredith’s explanation: it’s not that my mom wasn’t visiting. It’s that I am blocked, having not honed my ability to connect with the divine, and I really need to finally meet with her friend Harry, who is a talented medium and can teach me such skills. As I told her back in February, I’ve spent my entire dabbling-in-the-dark-arts budget this year on my session with her and another with a random reiki healer who told me I had sand in my throat and colon. I wanted to email my internist about this, but instead I started working with a new therapist who suggested I stop seeing random energy healers. So.

The fact is, in the twelve years since my mom passed, I’ve had exactly one clear sign from her. On her birthday, my twin and I went to get our annual chocolate chip cookie in her honor at our favorite bakery in Chicago, and Together Again by Janet Jackson came on — a pretty obscure hit, and her song of choice to jam out to at carpool drop-off. Other than that, slim pickings. The odd dream here and there, but nothing else of note.

The only thing I actually discovered in April, while looking for signs from beyond, is that the older I get, the more I have my mother’s hands. Small, thin, bony, with short, brittle nails that break. My Grandma Eileen used to tell my mom, “You have the hands of an artist,” which I think was just what she told herself to excuse the fact that my mom never got manicures. Every time I put my fingers to the keyboard in April, I saw them: my mother’s hands. Even her middle finger, which is particularly noteworthy.

My mom had a crooked middle finger that always sat at about 45 degrees. Sometimes, when she got angry — and she was human, so she got angry — she would flick people off rather than yell or cause a scene, just to get the rage out. And I adored it, because who could take a person seriously with that crooked little finger? So there I was in the kitchen, flipping off my husband while his back was turned — needing somewhere to put my rage — when I noticed: my middle finger has now also leaned to about 45 degrees. Not a sign from the heavens. Not divine intervention. But motivation enough to keep writing, if only to keep seeing her hands.

If anyone is a doctor, let me know if this is normal.

1. A humidifier with no top. My son Ruben stole the top from my beloved bedroom humidifier months ago, and because buying a replacement feels too difficult, I’ve simply succumbed to sleeping in dry air and waking up with sandpaper mouth. If you find yourself in a similar situation, might I suggest turning your humidifier into a self-misting vase?

   

2. Dried-out Chapstick. Leon loves to use my cocoa butter chapsticks and then lose the caps, which dries them out and renders them useless. I’m not sure why my kids want me to have such dry skin, but I have found that in dire circumstances, dried-out Chapstick can function as a glue stick if you wet it with a little water.

   

3. An AirPod case with no AirPods. AirPods are like crack for children. My kids are obsessed with stealing mine and magically losing one of the tiny earpieces. Something about the magnetic click of the case lures them. I’ve found that once your kids inevitably lose one or two AirPods for good, the cases make great earring holders.

   

4. A Dyson fan with no remote. During COVID, my husband and I bought one of those fancy Dyson fan/air purifiers, which was wonderful until one of my kids (I don’t know which one this time) lost the essential remote. Hot tip for Dyson: make that damn remote bigger. We’ve since put the fan to good use as a towel warmer, because it’s stuck at 90 degrees and we can’t turn it up or down without the remote.

   

5. A treadmill with a missing safety key. A few weeks ago, Ruben stole the safety key from our treadmill, which is essential to starting it. He mentioned something about hiding a string, but I wasn’t paying much attention until I tried to use the treadmill a few days later and realized I should have been paying him more mind. Now we have turned it into one of those really lifelike sculptures where you never know if it’s art or something functional: a real think piece, à la Ruben.

As a gift to all my readers, please do share any items your children have semi-broken, and I would be more than happy to come up with some ideas for new types of usage in the comments. To all those celebrating, Happy Mother’s Day.

“You will be Lloyd, I will be Zane, and Mommy will be Mia,” declares Leon.

“No, I will be Kai, Aysa will be Jay, and Mattie will be Cole, and Daddy will be Nya,” shouts Ruben.

Leon takes a minute. He’s five, so I wasn’t really expecting Confucius-level wisdom to come out of his mouth. But then: “Oh, Ruben, I don’t know if Aysa and Mattie will be able to be those Ninjagos with us on Halloween. Remember, we’re moving to San Francisco. We will definitely have friends to be ninjas with us; we just don’t know their names yet.”

I am in the front seat and nearly get into a car accident because giant tears are welling up in my eyeballs, obstructing my vision.

It’s one of those parenting moments where I want to crawl into the back seat and smother Leon. I could pop him and squeeze him so tight his eyes would bulge out of their sockets, and then once I’m done popping his eyes out of his head, I want to lie on top of him and shower him with kisses until he’s rolled out flat like a pancake. That is the overwhelming amount of violent love I feel for this sensei child in this very uncertain moment of all of our lives.

My kid said this wise, true thing, and I’m sitting there like: am I actually doing this right? Is he the one providing the guidance here? THESE CHILDREN. They know how to surprise you, and they get you good. So often I wonder how they’ll handle the cross-country move, the huge change in their little lives. Do they get what’s coming? Will they be okay? But Leon just answered that.

Over the past few months, my parenting hasn’t been my best. I’ve been so consumed with building our next life that I forgot or am too tired to be present in our current one. Quicker to yell, quicker to put on the television, quicker to make chicken nuggets for dinner again. I’ve been afraid my kids have noticed. That I’ve been so focused on the future that I’ve left them to emotionally fend for themselves. But somewhere along the line, some form of osmosis occurred. Leon gets it. And in this moment, I am taking the win.

Ruben looks a little worried at first. Then he nods. We’ll have new friends. Yeah.

They’ll be okay. But the real question is: will I?

Practicing candy collection skills.

“Diaper change?” I ask. “You know it,” she responds.

The call always comes in right when a mom has finally exhaled, when she’s settled into her “me” time and actually started to believe she might get away with it — then suddenly she has to dart off, wrangle her child from the gym daycare to the bathroom, clean its poop, and dash back into class, all within three minutes, because women never miss a fucking beat. I had watched this happen to everyone but me with great, smug satisfaction. I could spot the incoming call from across the room. I considered it a talent.

And then, naturally, I got the call.

One day, I decided to be brave and bring my own kids to the gym daycare. I have two boys. Leon, my older one, I knew would be fine. Ruben, my younger one, was what I would describe as an open question. I dropped them off. Leon found the Legos immediately, like a normal child. Ruben stared at me with sheer terror — what kind of monster are you for leaving me here? He gave me his best Bambi eyes and went completely still, like I was abandoning him on the side of a highway. I waved goodbye with the cheerful aggression of a mother who had committed to this plan and was not turning back.

I ran up to the yoga studio, put down my mat, took approximately one breath, and my phone rang. “Ma’am, your son has pooped.”

I internally growled. “I’ll be right there.”

Then realized I didn’t have a diaper on me — a move so on-brand for me that I have to respect it — so I ran to the grocery store next door. While I was gone, Ruben apparently assessed the situation and concluded that poop alone was not going to get him out of there. Another baby must have tipped him off: poop gets your mom back, but then back to her workout she goes. He decided he needed to escalate.

My phone rang again. “Ma’am, your son has thrown up. He cried so hard he made himself sick.”

I stood in the grocery store holding a pack of Pampers, looked up at the ceiling, and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. “Of course he did,” I replied.

I went and cleaned up my child and was informed we weren’t allowed to stay due to the vomit, which made complete sense and was also soul-crushing. The moment we stepped outside, Ruben looked up at me with his big, clear, completely untroubled eyes.

“I’m feeling better now, Mom,” he informed me.

Of course you are, Ruben.

I have not been brave enough to bring him back since. I still love him anyway.

Do you think if a dad dropped his kids off solo and one of them pooped, they’d just change the diaper for him — you know, because he’s doing it all on his own?

Yesterday, as I dropped the boys off at their respective schools, the dad who runs drop-off leaned in my car and said, “Nicole, you seem like you’re glowing.” Besides being the nicest thing you can say to a woman in the morning time, I really felt like I was. So I responded, “No, Andrew, this is just what it looks like to check a bunch of items off your to-do list.”

I’m certain this feeling won’t last forever — my anxiety is already in the corner doing warmup stretches — but for now, I’m going to go outside, let a bird dress me, and go for a skip.

Me at this very moment.

Sonja’s (twin) husband calls us the cab drivers. Always on the horn, one AirPod in, talking to each other at all times, including and especially at 5:45 in the morning. Not about anything. Just on the phone. Breathing. FaceTiming with each other’s overhead lighting. Saying hold on one second, getting in the shower, and then coming right back. My husband gets a “I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Sonja” most mornings before he has even fully entered the kitchen, and to his credit, he has never once made me feel bad about this, which is either a sign of a very secure man or a man who is not listening.

We shared a womb. Then a room. Then a college.

I want to be clear that we are not one of those twin situations. We are not finishing each other’s sentences or feeling each other’s pain across great distances or dressing alike. (Although she did text me at the exact moment I went into labor with my son Leon, and asked if I was ok at 1:45 am.) We are just two people who happen to need to be in constant contact, including at dawn. Very normal. Not codependent at all.

Anyhoo.

This is what makes moving to San Francisco the hardest part of everything.

We’ve done long distance before; I lived in Mexico City for three years, we both studied abroad, and we survived it, and maybe even convinced ourselves that it was good for our twinship. But we were younger, and I think we didn’t know yet what we were giving up by being far from each other. We also didn’t have kids yet. You don’t fully understand what someone costs until you’ve had to go without them for a while. Now I know. I know exactly what it costs, and I’m still doing it anyway, which stinks a very specific amount.

The other day, I was at the park, and I saw two boys, maybe four years old, and I knew immediately. You can always tell. (Probably because they are about the same size and kind of look alike.) I had to ask. I always have to. It’s a compulsion, I can’t help it, it’s like hearing someone speaking a language you know in a foreign country and just needing them to know that you know it too. Are they twins? I asked the mom. She said yes, and I said I’m a twin too, and she did the thing people do where they smile and say that must be so special, and I said it is, and I meant it, and then I stood there for too long watching those boys run around the playground, hoping the mom wouldn’t notice that I was crying.

The time difference might work in Sonja’s favor, honestly. I am a 5:30 am caller on a good day. The two-hour buffer is a gift I’m giving her. She should thank me. Her husband definitely will.

When I told her we were moving, she was quiet for a second, and then she said it was right for my family, and we’d still have the phone.

She’s right. We will. And we also have airplanes.

Two cabbies, age 5.

That’s it. That’s the dish. Salt water. Eggs. Cold. In a white porcelain bowl with a blue trim. Presented to you as if it were a delicacy.

My grandpa Joe would tuck into this, and tuck in is the only phrase that will do because he lapped it up like a puppy, and announced that it was “delicious!” Every year. About the egg salt water. I want to be clear that my grandpa was not a man of diminished capacities. He was sharp as a tack. He just genuinely believed that cold salt water with egg pieces in it was delicious, and I think about this a lot, but then again, he also loved pickled herring.

I did not eat the soup. I was a child who understood, instinctively, that you do not yuck anyone’s yum at Grandma Eileen’s table unless you want that yuck referenced at every subsequent family gathering for the rest of your human life. So I sat there moving the egg around with my spoon, performing the act of a person about to eat soup, privately ranking it alongside veal pocket and tuna fish in my hierarchy of least favorite Ashkenazic Jewish foods, and waited for the brisket.

Jews, and I say this as a Jew, are not subtle with the food metaphors. Passover is essentially an edible PowerPoint presentation on suffering and perseverance. Charoset for mortar! Bitter herbs for bitterness! Salt water for tears! Eggs for rebirth! It’s a punch-you-in-the-face-with-symbolism holiday.

So, here is what I need to tell you.

We’re moving to San Francisco.

(I know. I KNOW.)

My husband has been commuting there every week for months, which means our family has been running a long-distance relationship with one of its own members, and at some point you look at the math, and the math says: this is insane, actually. So we’re going. We’re leaving Chicago. We’re turning the page on this chapter, which is a phrase I would normally find annoying, but is the only phrase that fits right now.

I am devastated. I am relieved. I am excited. I am terrified. I am making a Passover dinner for some of my favorite people in the entire world, knowing it might be one of the last times I do this in this kitchen, in this city I have loved and complained about in equal measure for years. I contain, at present, a multitude. An embarrassing surplus of them.

And here is the part I’m a little embarrassed about:

This week, I wanted the egg soup.

Me. Voluntarily. Standing in my own kitchen with an actual craving for cold salt water with hard-boiled egg pieces in it, a dish I spent my entire childhood rejecting — and I had to stand there and reckon with the fact that my body apparently processes grief by wanting to eat symbolic foods I have historically found upsetting.

Here’s the thing though. The egg in the salt water represents new beginnings in the middle of sorrow. Life continuing. The idea that you’re crying AND something is starting. The soup is not a contradiction. The soup is the whole point. We eat it because sadness and new chapters go together. They’ve always gone together. That’s why there’s this weird soup.

I was standing there genuinely considering making myself a bowl when I felt that very specific sensation of my grandma watching from wherever she is now, wearing the expression of a woman who has been trying to tell you something for thirty years and has finally gotten through.

So now you understand the soup, Nicky Noodle.

I know, Grandma. I know.

I didn’t make the bowl. But I wrote about it, which I think she would have counted.

If you’re celebrating Passover, Easter, or anything that asks you to gather with people you love this week, I wish you a wonderful one. And yes, I’m aware that at minimum this move will be content. A good friend reminded me of that, and honestly it’s the most comfort I’ve found so far.

So when he came home, I went to a Barry’s-adjacent class. You know the kind, dark room, music so loud it replaces your thoughts, which is the entire point, and I got on a treadmill, and I ran. Now, I am not a runner. But I ran like I was. There was no speed fast enough. I kept hitting the up arrow like I was trying to escape my own flesh.

The guy next to me finally leaned over and said, “What are you running from?”

Could he smell it on me? The desperation, the exhaustion, the fact that for most of the week I’d worn the same clothes and then worn them to this workout? Here I thought I was being coy. But I laughed, because what wasn’t I running from? My house. My chores. My children’s fevers. My own reflection in the dark mirror of the treadmill screen. The specific exhaustion of being the person who holds everything together while also falling apart.

I smiled and replied, “Honey, all of it.” It takes a particular kind of confidence to pull off honey with a stranger, one that I think is honed after being trapped in your house. Hell hath no fury like a mother running away from her responsibilities. I should make that a bumper sticker and put it right across my forehead.

Please tell me how you blow off steam. I need ideas.

I really love my Gap sweatshirt. Unlike The Row, it is not dry clean only, so after it doubles as a Kleenex, I can throw it in the wash.

Due to my virus-induced inability to write anything “real” this week, I present the quiz below: Is it The Row, or is it the Gap? The winner gets to buy themselves the sweatshirt.

ANSWER KEY (From Left to Right):

1. The Row

2. The Gap

3. The Row

4. The Gap

5. The Row

6. The Gap

The only way to really tell the difference? The Row prominently displays the label on its website.

I’ll be back with more next week.