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I fixed grilled cheese and sliced apples for their lunch, placed the plastic plates and mason jar juice glasses on the table, and walked out the front door, Baby Brighid suctioned to my chest in her Moby wrap. I didn’t tell the boys. I just left, wondering vaguely how long it would take them to realize I was gone. They are not bad children and I am not an always bad mother, but something inside of me, the me-me, in the last year has, I don’t know how to describe it...changed, died, been annihilated, weakened, hidden, crashed?

I can no longer find the right words to describe anything. Part of my brain is no longer functional. A close friend of mine swears she has early on-set Alzheimer's. She's 41 and I always reassure her that it happens to all of us.

Us. Mothers.

Those poor, romantic souls blinded by the beauty of babies and bassinets, or who counted wrong or drank too much, any combination of the three, it doesn't matter, we're all in motherhood together.

I closed my newly painted front door. It had dried a rusty orange after the second coat. It was called Uptown Girl and I chose it over another color, simply out of my deep love of Billy Joel.  Like choosing a book for its cover. We all do it.

I avoided the buckled concrete of the sidewalk leading to the house and crossed the yard to the mailbox. Faking opening the mailbox, I stole a peak into the front windows to see if any of the four looked out. No one. I eyed the swing in the side yard as a possible place to try and recapture my sanity. I looked up the street, speed humps one after another, leading out of the neighborhood.