“Mom, is it true things happen for a reason?” Casey’s green eyes fringed by impossibly curly brown lashes widened with anticipation at the possible confirmation that some benevolent force is at work that can explain why bad things happen to good people.

“Who the fuck said that?” I snapped. Okay, I didn’t really say fuck, but I wanted to.

This pithy, saccharine saw lodges in my ears like the stinking turd of stupidspeak that it is. And whenever someone says it, whether the person is my friend or not, I cannot suppress my outrage that anyone dare to explain away the immoral, indecent, unfair and—in many cases—avoidable crap that rains down on perfectly lovely people and takes their lives, their health, their finances and even their children in directions that should only be reserved for those whose full names end in Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz or Rove.

Worried that the BP oil leak is leading to the end of sea life as we’ve known it? Not to fret, everything happens for a reason, ya know. No. I don’t know. What could possibly be the reason, smarty-pants? That this horrific event is the only way Americans can grasp the message that an oil-based energy system is bad? That assumption gives Americans’ collective intelligence way too much credit considering that this point has been driven home to us about once every five years since 1910, when more than nine million gallons soaked into Kern County, California, permanently despoiling hundreds of acres of once fertile farmland.

Your child was diagnosed with autism? No use being upset. After all, everything happens for a reason. Oh, yeah? Maybe the reason one of every 60 boys is now diagnosed with this disease is that the big shots in multi-billion dollar chemical corporations just don’t want the world to know that while they’re shoveling their obscene profits into offshore bank accounts, their products are melting the brains and gonads of generations of children all over the world.

You just lost your job? Well, you’ve always said you wanted to try something different, maybe now’s the time. Just remember, everything happens for a reason. Oh, I’ll remember all right, just after I remember to write down all those items that job I just lost was going to pay for—my children’s college education, my mortgage, my health insurance, my car payment…did I forget anything? Oh yeah, food, medicine, gasoline, clothes, my phone bill, heat, water, air conditioning and the kids’ braces.

The everything happens for a reason homily is right up there with things always work out for the best.

No they don’t. Tell me, please, what is working out about the war the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan. I really want to know. And so do thousands of families on both sides of this manufactured and uncalled for conflict; families like yours who have lost their children, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers in unspeakably, bloody and painful deaths that would melt the rose off even Pollyanna’s glasses.

And how is firing thousands of teachers working out for tens of thousands of children whose families are one step away from illiteracy, actual and cultural, and already believe everything they hear on Fox News?

How is this upcoming generation of youngsters who confuse true leadership and intelligence with looking like cheer-leader-Barbie and hairspray-helmeted-Ken? How are they going to vote? For the candidate with the biggest hair, the whitest teeth and the highest cheekbones? God help us all.

The next time someone tries to embroider a shitty situation with platitudinous drivel, please forgive me in advance if I throw up all over them, preferably as they walk out the door to a black tie gala. And then, when their designer duds are drenched in stinky vomit, I dare them say, “Oh well. Everything works out for the best!”

So what horrific circumstance was Casey trying to rationalize? The gulf oil spill? Global warming? His own brain damage caused by a hospital error at his birth?

Casey explains: “That’s what Oogway says.” (For the uninitiated, Oogway is the kung fu master—who happens to be a tortoise—in Kung Fu Panda, a feature cartoon that takes place in China.)

Brilliant. Pre-packaged wisdom straight from the beak of a spokes-tortoise for a country that—intentionally or not—is overtaking ours on every front, profiting tremendously from our own willingness to swallow, whole-hog, idiotic platitudes like everything works out for the best.

If our children’s children are curious enough to question why they’re still paying interest to the Chinese for the money we borrowed to launch a war that accomplished nothing but the destruction of our own way of life, we can direct them to the golden tablet dug from a pile of bullshit, guarded by magical salamanders from the planet Xenon and upon which is written, Everything happens for a reason, stupid.

For Prudence Baird, shopping for camping gear with her teenage son makes climbing mountains child’s play.

Ah, teenagers. You gotta love ‘em. Or not.

Just at the time your peers who had the smarts to drop their litters in their twenties or early thirties—or perhaps the smartest ones who decided not to have kids at all—are decorating a second home in the Hamptons or having their teeth capped and eyelids “done,” you are hauling an ungrateful hunk of hormones to R.E.I. to buy a backpack for his school’s mandatory weeklong trek in the Green Mountains; an outing designed to build esprit-de-corps.

A typical exchange begins subtly. “I don’t see why I have to go.”

Like a symphony, it builds, “What’s the point of going camping?” and “Why did you make me go to this school?”

Here comes the bridge: “Why did you force us to leave Los Angeles?”

Like the concert-goer who cannot suppress a cough during a quiet movement, and knowing full well that I will engender ire, I blurt, “C’mon, honey. You’re the one who said you’d like to go to this school.”

But there is no room for the truth in a hot-blooded diatribe whose dual purposes are to sever the umbilical cord that binds mother and son, and to immolate the oedipal link by first soaking it in gasoline, then throw a burning match on it while yelling something pithy like, “Ha! Take that you villainous harridan, source of original sin and adolescent angst!”

Instead he settles for: “You’re lying. I wanted to stay with my friends. I was happy in Los Angeles.”

I decide the Gandhian approach is best.

“Okay.”

“You’re just saying, ‘okay’ because you know I’m right.”

No, I’m just say ‘okay’ because I’m not willing to start WWIII in a 2007 Subaru with a defenseless Bedlington terrier listening in.

“And you don’t want to admit you’re wrong.”

And? There has to be a Part B.

“And you’re wrong. You’re always wrong.”

Inside the store, where I fear turning around to check whether he is following me lest I be turned into stone, I pretend I am part of some other family. One where the kids rush ahead of the parents, eagerly crawling inside each and every tent, squeezing sleeping bags to check which one is softest, and grabbing elevation maps from the broad flat drawers where they’re kept. “Let’s go here! Can we stay longer? Please, Mom, please?” Ah, but that is some other family whose voices I hear.

If this were a movie, this would be the scene where the music swells, and as tears trickle down my cheeks, memories of this teenage creature’s most endearing moments flash through my head. Him, in footsie pajamas, banging on pots and pans as I step around him in the kitchen whilst making dinner. Him, proudly presenting me with his first clay sculpture that is supposed to be a sea monster but looks just like an erect penis. Him, strapped into his car seat, rosy cheeked and singing, “We can fly, we can fly, we can fly!”

I awake from my reverie when I hear the universal cry of the fledgling adult, “Mom! Mom!”

Since there is no reflective surface which I can peer into to ensure he’s not holding a weapon, slowly I turn….to find him holding a bizarre looking shoe that looks like it’s made from garbage held together with Gorilla Glue.

“These are cool! Can we get them?”

He misinterprets the shock in my eyes as rejection. Disappointment flickers across his brow but before it solidifies into defiance, I reach across the ages and pull that endearing child close to me.

“Let’s try them on,” I enthuse, latching onto his rare use of first person plural. “They’re, uh, cool!” He does a double take, searching my face for a moment, and then squats down to look for his size on the shoe boxes below.

“If you’re sure…”

I am SO sure. Apparently, this hike is building esprit de corps—as long as I can afford it.

Prudence Baird is transported back to a time when her boys were small; a time rich with storybooks, morning hugs, inquiry and magic.

Mother’s Day has come and gone—again bringing with it all the reminders that this phase of life soon will pass. Lumpy breakfasts in bed and hand-drawn cards, both lovingly crafted by children eager to please, have been replaced with brunch out and Hallmark cards personalized only as a grumpy teenager can do—with a signature.

And so it is that under a starlit dome outside my bedroom window, as Gemini’s twins arc overhead and the grandfather clock begins to strike midnight, my restless mind mulls over a bittersweet discovery made earlier that day as I trawled through a neglected drawer looking for letter-sized file folders.

My probing hand settled on a smooth plastic stick, a foot long, with rounded ends—a child’s toy; a magic wand mixed in with old pens, highlighters, Post-it notes and rolls of tape. The wand’s cool resin holds inside two liquids—one heavy and cobalt blue, one light and clear. In this embryonic fluid dances a teaspoon or so of silvery sparkling stars and tiny gold crescent moons that float from one end of the wand to the other.

I hold the wand to the light. As the particles swim to and fro, I am transported to the time when I met this wand standing with its mates in a rectangular basket on a low-lying shelf at Once Upon a Story, a children’s bookstore that long ago filled a canary yellow craftsman cottage with fairytales and stories of monsters, magic and make-believe in Silverlake, California.

So many great children’s books—The Little House in the Big Woods; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; Goodnight, Moon; Half Magic; The Five Children and It; biographies, histories and dinosaur books—were tucked into a rabbit’s warren of rooms with hand-hooked rugs and tiny rocking chairs made just so for small bottoms to settle into while discovering the delights of words and illustrations together. Interspersed between the books were science experiments, knitting projects, beading kits, juggling balls, fairies’ wings—and magic wands. A check-out counter staffed by friendly middle-aged women with glasses on beaded chains was packed with whimsical gift cards, friendship bracelets, mood rings and Mrs. Grossman’s stickers.

But most of all, the store was filled with children, including mine—two little bright-eyed boys who skipped happily across creaking wooden floors clutching Thomas the Tank engines in their little fists, hurling themselves face down into giant pillows shaped like turtles while making “vroom, vroom” boy-noises and running their locomotives across the floorboards.

It’s gone now, the aptly named Once Upon a Story; gone like so many other independent bookstores. Gone like the childhoods that once breathed life into the sunlit rooms and brightened parents’ lives with innocent inquiry, morning hugs and nighttime snuggles.

In the wee hours of this sleepless darkness, I am still there, waiting at the counter of Once Upon a Story. I am watching two small boys—one with golden curls, one with straight flaxen hair—as they present me with impossibly large piles of books to buy. I shake my head at some, accept others, and pause to consider the two magic wands held in tiny outstretched hands.

How can I say “no” to the pleading eyes that beg the question, “Do you see the magic, too?” I do. And I still do these dozen years later on this sleepless Mother’s Day weekend. A yellow wand for Casey, a blue one for Ethan—the same blue one I found today in the old file cabinet.

As mid-May ushers in the season of mandatory and somewhat manufactured celebrations—Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, June weddings—I hear again the words, “Something old, something new” and for the first time, I know what that “something” is that is borrowed; our children’s childhood. For me, now returned to the magical place from whence it came. Once you leave, you can never go back—except tonight, between the first stroke of midnight and the last.

The screen door bangs shut behind me, echoing in a house that only last week was filled with the last frantic scrabblings of summer vacation.

The school backpacks no longer hang on their hooks by the door; they are off for another tour of duty filled with new spiral notebooks, freshly sharpened pencils, pocket-sized tissue packs and re-charged cell phones.

I stand just inside the front door, unable to move.  Unwilling to hang up my keys.  Incapable of addressing this morning’s breakfast dishes, still in the sink.

I am paralyzed by the sudden realization that all too soon there will be no more first days of school. No more carpools to drive, after-school games to attend or fundraisers to plan.  In that not-too-distant future, what will autumn be like without the noise, commotion and companionship children bring to a home, to a life—to my life?

My eardrums ache, searching to pick up even the faintest of noises.  In the distance, I hear my neighbor’s chainsaw cutting wood for the winter.   Upstairs, a gentle snore tells me the cat is curled up in a warm shaft of morning sun.

As my ears adjust to the heaviness of this newly hatched solitude, I realize that the sounds I’m hearing, and those that are absent, are an auditory foreshadowing of life after and beyond school-aged children.

Ethan, 15, is already preparing us for the inevitable separation by spending most of his days and evenings at school or out with friends.  But my youngest, Casey, is still very much at home.

At 13 years, his 85 pounds stretched over a 5’3” frame, Casey is thin and taut like an old-fashioned car antennae. And like that obsolete car part, he picks up signals the rest of us cannot receive.  He broadcasts these in an ongoing stream-of-consciousness that morphs into a (mostly) one-way conversation; his volume stuck on “loud” – the only variation being “really loud.”

If Casey is in the house, you feel his presence the way you feel electricity building before a thunderstorm. Intervals of stillness are punctuated by the scritch-scratching of his colored pencils as he draws. Paper rustles; the pencil-sharpener grinds.  Soon, his pregnant hush gives birth to another singular portrait and a verbal onslaught of insights and endless inquiry.

“Who is this?” he demands, sticking an 8 ½ x 11-inch piece of paper five inches from my nose.

“Hmmm,” is my customary response as I back away to gain perspective.  “Ho Chi Minh?” I venture.

“How did you know?!” Casey cries, delighted.

“It looks like him.”

“How? How does it look like him?”

And thus begins another lesson in the ancient art of physiognomy or “face reading,” something children like my son are supposed to be unable to do.  Like a cat that senses he’s not supposed to trespass on certain laps, however, Casey ventures there anyway, attempting to capture with his portraits the very essence that drives unique individuals who push society forward, haul civilization backwards or simply create a wake with their unkempt or munificent lives. Samuel Johnson, Spinoza, Gandhi, James Brown—no one escapes his scrutiny.

He forces my somnambulant brain to awaken, to dust off forgotten lessons in history, geography and cultural trivia. He makes connections, hauls me along untrodden pathways, bumping into long-forgotten factoids or stumbling over new information. The impact of war, greed, poverty and education on a person are examined and parsed; all part of a borderless jigsaw puzzle Casey has constructed, starting point unknown.

“Who was the president of South Viet Nam?” Casey demands.

I’m stumped.

“It’s Ngo Dinh Diem!” he crows.

Eventually, I deduce that Casey’s Vietnam War obsession began with an overheard comment on NPR days ago.

Figuring out Casey’s inspirations is a Sherlock Holmesian exercise; I congratulate myself on solving the mystery.  Casey, however, has moved on to another portrait, another obsession. The pencil scratches furiously.

Now, with the boys back in school. I have a whole six hours to myself every day, five days a week—plenty of time to catch up on just about everything I ignored all summer.

But instead of feeling relieved, free of Casey’s strenuous curiosity, I feel adrift in a fitful silence.

Somewhere, I wonder, is he asking someone else, “How? How does it look like him?”

“Tim must be doing very well!” I can almost hear my friend Sarah’s eyebrows hitting her hairline when I tell her my family is going to England and Scotland for a month this summer.

Yeah, this summer—when a cup of London Starbucks is ₤3, the equivalent of $6.

Even though Sarah didn’t exactly ask the question, she did beg it: Why on earth would a sane person, let alone a family of four, hop the pond now when the dollar is in the toilet and even the esteemed New York Times Travel section trumpets “Europe? It’s way too expensive!”

I know there are less costly places we could go, but as my children shift into their teenage modalities, soon will come the day when they’d rather work all summer as dishwashers in a windowless basement kitchen than be seen walking down the same sidewalk as mom and dad—no matter what the setting.

So, like the spurned lover trying to recapture the heady days of early affection, I set my sights on seducing my children away from Facebook and Grand Theft Auto in the usual American fashion—by throwing money at them. In this case, lots of money—because that’s what it will take for us to travel the British Isles together this summer. (It will cost even more if we want to bring suitcases.)

I admit it; my plans are somewhat selfish. I long to see my sons’ faces when they first glimpse a real Scottish castle reflected in the cobalt-blue waters of a Highlands loch. I want to see them once again as the little boys they’re fast leaving behind; scrambling over ruins and castle walls, shouting with excitement, and seeing, in their minds’ eyes, William Wallace or Robert the Bruce lurking around a tumbled-down turret or half-buried breastwork.

As parents, we carry in our hearts moments like these—pictures and words like snatches of songs—that sustain us during the dark nights of parental fears and self-doubt. And as my children leave behind forever Christopher Robin, Mary Poppins and even Harry Potter, I long to fill my cup again from those days of innocence.

So when my friend raises her eyebrows at my extravagance, I can only agree with her that it will be costly. But, to my way of thinking, the cost of not going is greater.