This weekend it will once again be time to try to pull off birthday magic. Day-Hay is twelve and we�re doing a party. As parties go, this one should be fairly easy. We�re going to the roller rink and both boys and girls are invited this year. I don�t have to plan activities or buy food. Unfortunately, Day-Hay wants another castle cake but she promises to do some of it herself. No, the hard part is not the party. The hard part is figuring out where all of the time went.

I still remember when I found out I was pregnant with Day-Hay. I knew, deep down, that we were very excited but it would have been hard to discern that in the moment. We were supposed to be meeting with Mr. Philately�s family somewhere but he was desperately ill. We figured out a while later that the problem was more the cure than the disease. He was taking Seldane, an antihistamine, for hay fever before he got sick. When he got ill, the doctor put him on an antibiotic. It wasn�t until a year or so later that they realized that the combination of Seldane and some antibiotics caused heart and other serious problems. All I knew then was that the man was constantly in danger of fainting, I was nauseous, and Kat was a needy not-quite-two-year-old. But he recovered, I had a baby, Kat grew up and now we�re fine.

I also remember when Day-Hay was born. We had driven down to the hospital the night before in fog so thick that I remember being glad that it was Mr. Philately who had to find the road. I remember wondering how he was managing to see the road. (The answer was that he really wasn�t but he had the good sense not to tell me that then.) I do okay being pregnant but I�m not very good at the birth part so the whole thing got a bit complicated. Day-Hay was in distress and they were quite worried but somehow I failed to perceive that part accurately until the danger was past. I held Day-Hay for a second or so before they whisked her away. The next time we met was in NICU. She was the biggest baby there. (Although I am under five foot, she was my small baby at seven pounds, eight ounces.) I later saw in her chart that they had noted that I spoke to her and stroked her belly through the incubator portholes.

A second baby is treated very differently than a first baby. With a first baby, the adults adapt to the baby. With a second baby, the baby is required to adapt a bit to the household. I tried not to wake a sleeping Kat. Sometimes I had to wake a sleeping Day-Hay (although it was rarely an issue because Day-Hay rarely slept). I couldn�t just leave a three-year-old at nursery school in order not to wake her younger sister.

It�s hard to believe that all that happened so long ago. It feels like yesterday and like ancient history. Where did all the time go?

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P.S. The silkworm has been found. It crawled into the cardboard "tunnel" that surrounds silkworm city and made its cocoon there. It is safe to enter Day-Hay's room again.

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