Obligatory Mother's Day Reflection: Where There is Blood But No Strong Cocktails

OK. Here's the rundown. On the whole, much better than Easter in that the children had clothing. And diapers. Thus for me, no escapism.

A.M. Church with R's family, as we were already down for his brother's surprise 30th birthday party the night before. You know friends are getting older when the partiers leave 3/4 of the keg.

NOON. The Bean manages to cut her head on a pew in church. Maybe that is a sign that we should take a break until the kids are older.

3:30 P.M. We visit my own mum at work. Yes, she had to work on Mother's Day. At least she had a wild salmon dinner waiting for her back at home.

4:30 P.M. We head for Ocean Grove, where I lived for four years while working as a reporter and then, later, on weekends as a break from my stint as a live-in NYC tutor in grad school. Yes, my Mother's Day gift was nostalgia, of course. Though not far from the Garden State Parkway, I had not been back in town for any length of time since I moved out in the fall of 2001, after getting married. (Kids just generally aren't flexible toward sightseeing, strangely, and our period of househunting ended the romance of long, aimless drives with children.)

5:00 P.M. We eat thin (matzoh-thin) crust pizza at Pete and Elda's in Neptune, about 1/2 mile from the entrance to Ocean Grove.

6:00 P.M. We see the old house, check out the staggering revitalization projects of next-door neighbor Asbury Park, walk on the boardwalk and then introduce Lena to SAND.

7:00 P.M. Lena decides she loves SAND. So much so that she grabs fistfuls and dumps them down her back. At home it is revealed that her diaper is full of SAND, yet strangely her bottom isn't amenable to SAND.

8:00 P.M. We realize we have an hour's drive ahead and hit the road. I inform Rich, and it is true, that we have just had the best Mother's Day ever.