I am so very tired. Driving three hundred miles to Portland and back, and then another sixty to pick up Paul at school. It is hard to live in the middle of nowhere.

My grandfather, as he aged, drove less and less. Finally he would drive three miles into town and back, and that was it. This could be me someday. Driving just kills me.

And now Tom is playing Stereolab, and I am sitting here at my desk, and Paul is cruising hither and yon between us. In October he will be sixteen years old. Sixteen. The last of my small ones. Gone, soon, forever.

I never thought I would grow up to be a sentimental mother. The world won't stop surprising me.