No amount of Pinterest pins or garden remodels will make me a better gardener, but I’ll garden anyway, because the very act of gardening feeds me.

Each day, I write my kindergartener a simple, short note and put it in his lunch box.

My ten year old made dinner. I can do this. I can be the mother my children need in this moment, and the next.

Underneath these selfish and unrealistic wishes that skate across my mind is the knowledge that wishing alone won’t make it so.

I decided to grade myself – on being a mother.

My delectable seven year old is as easy to cuddle as a hedgehog these days.

Never again will I hold the secret of pregnancy inside my body or feel the letdown of milk fill my breasts. There is grief in this realization.

I thought about how I should thank her and what I should have said. I thought a lot about the lady who was a superior mom stand-in for those 20 minutes, and about how I could be more like her in similar situations.

Shakespeare is yet alive and well, no matter that 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of his death.