My Nick

This is my Nick, a beautiful child if I do say so myself, and I do. He is taking fencing lessons while I'm away. And tennis lessons. And badminton, volleyball, hockey, basketball and football lessons. And a baseball clinic. This is by way of allowing my husband his work, his sanity and a little peace five mornings a week. Also by way of distracting Nick from the lengthy absence of his mother.

You wouldn't suppose he would miss me because I am not a gifted mother. I know this from my acquaintance with the other kin

d -- mothers who host playdates featuring tubs of Jell-o to frolic in, hand-cut vegetables to snack upon, inflatable pools with slides and sprinklers for which they could and did figure out how to work the electric air pumps that came with them.

I'm the other kind. The kind who sits in the kitchen reading the newspaper while the children play videogames on one of the shameful four game systems in my living room. The kind whose pantry filled with cookies and freezer filled with Otter Pops are open to independent raiding because I really can't be bothered to deal with snacks that require preparation of any sort. The kind whose dogs are permitted to follow the children placidly around, willingly trading the cacophony and peril of a pack of lightsaber-wielding boys for the easy score of unattended crackers and whatever falls from the children's mouths while they scream at each other.

Your basic nightmare, that is me. The other moms o

n my block are much, much better at it and know enough to feel guilty for allowing their children to romp in the unhealthy, risk-fraught playground which is my house, but there's not a lot they can do about it. By virtue of my having no particular time for children, the children are drawn to my house like flies to donut holes. And I, hoist by my own petard, am the lord of the flies.

Yes, I am not a gifted mother. But he misses me. This is unfathomable, but children are not known for their sagacity and thank God for that.

Things have been slow around here the last day or two and I've little to report. Or maybe

I'm just preoccupied. Maybe even mothers of no discernible maternal

talent get a little blue without their little boys.

So, here's lookin' at you, kid. Mommy misses you, too.