I finish work early and rush home so I can pick Joe up and take him for ice cream, but I also haven’t seen Bobbie all day, so we all go to get ice cream, Bobbie and Joe and mom and Dad. Bobbie cries because she wants to ride in Joe’s stroller, and Joe cries because he doesn’t want Bobbie to come. I lay down on the floor to be with Bob on her level, but Joe wants water, and chips. Joe wants me to put him to bed, and Bobbie wants to throw herself over the railing and down the stairs. I read Bobbie a book, Joe wants a different one, he wants to do it with me but and not with Bobbie, he wants me all to himself, in a way he never did when he was 2, which Bobbie now is. Bobbie wants a hug and koalas to me like she misses me since we’ve sent her to school, like there’s something fundamentally wrong with the fact that we’ve sent her there. Sometimes I’m pulled so far in two different directions that I wonder if I’ll rip into 2, form two new people. It’s Saturday morning and no one is going to work or school and finally it’s just time to be with them, for us all to be together as one thing. Joe asks Bobbie to come play in his room. They shut the door to their own little world, and there’s the relief of them not needing us, and then the sad of not being needed, at all.