Emi is ambivalent. She is five years old, losing her baby-fat and gaining the responsibilities of a kindergartener. At school she loves the thrill of being in "K," though she is anxious over the newness of it all. At home, she revels in her status as an older sibling even as she is bitterly jealous about having to share me with her brother.

When my oldest son started his first day of Kindergarten I, like many mothers, cried the minute he sat down in his classroom. He was a big boy now. He was entering a new phase in his life, yet I still remember the first day I held him in my arms as a newborn.

I can smell something in the next county.  I can detect unseen mold under a bathtub mat.  I can sniff out spoiled milk from behind refrigerator doors.  Like any superpower, this particular trait can sometimes be a gift, and sometimes a curse.

I'm going to confess something that might sound shocking coming from a writer who often takes as her subject the complex and sometimes dark experience of mothering young children . . .