TIME

When Mom needs to hear that it’s O.K. not to be O.K.

I HAD MADE IT AS FAR AS THE STREET CORNER WHEN IT occurred to me that I hadn’t paid. I’d said goodbye to my friends at the restaurant and walked out. When I returned, embarrassed and apologetic, one friend mentioned that another had asked if I was O.K.

“Of course she’s not O.K.,” she had answered. “She has a 4-month-old.”

That 4-month-old was the reason I

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