Dear Kid,

One of the most important things about being a mom is being able to master The Mom Look.

The Look can convey a wide variety of instructions, emotions, judgments, and answers—and kids always know what The Look means. At least they do if they know what’s good for them.

The great thing about The Mom Look is that it goes right to the heart of the matter. There’s no ignoring a Mom Look. You can try, but The Mom Look will penetrate your defenses. The Mom Look can bore through the back of your head. Through walls.

The Mom Look can also cover distance. Not just distance to the next room, but vast distances. Specifically, from wherever Mom is to wherever you are.

So if you think someone is looking in your general direction, you might be right.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

There is no letter today (except the letter “Q” brought to you by Sesame Street).

Last night was taken up with

1. Making dinner
2. Helping Pi study for her accounting exam
3. Snuggling the Puppy

And dessert. There was excellent dessert.

And a soccer game. With a surprising upset. (Sorry. I won’t talk about that.)

And a little bit of late night TV. With a commercial (for cars, but don’t ask which one because I don’t remember) that used “winter” as a verb. As in, “Get ready to winter.”

Doesn’t that sound like something out of a romance novel? “Lord and Lady Beauford felt it was their duty to winter at their country estate, near the river where Beaufords had held property for 17 generations.”

Who knew you could use “to winter” in a modern car commercial? Clearly not someone who has eaten too much dessert and helped a child construct a fictional balance sheet and income statement. (Don’t even pretend that “U. O. Mee Industries” is a real company. And yes, we put that entry under accounts payable.)

Have a great day, sweetie.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Have you ever had one of those days when you get to the end(ish) of the day and you say to yourself, “Well, I didn’t do that very well.”

For example (completely hypothetically), if on a Sunday you slept late (which you needed very badly), then you dawdled over coffee and the Sunday paper (which you enjoyed very much), then you got a teeny bit done on the family taxes but decided a much better use of your time would be to catch up on the last three episodes of the first season of The Blacklist, after which you spent some time with the GirlChild until it was time to leave for the 7:30pm soccer game which ended up starting late, and you realized that not only have you not written Monday’s blog, you have Work that has be done before the end of day.

Hypothetically, of course.

It might occur to you that you really should have done things differently.

And, still hypothetically, you hear—in the wee recesses of your brain—the echoes of your mother saying “I mentioned you might want to get your work done before you watched Netflix.”

It’s one of those things where if it were your mother actually talking to you, you’d have been obligated to roll your eyes and get into a huff.

But since it’s the echo of mom-ness and you did the conjuring of the echo, all you can do is agree. And sigh.

Hypothetically speaking of course.

Not that either you or I would ever do that.

Love, Mom

P.S. I have to go finish my Work now.