I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn't allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn't allow them to play with rope, string, balloons - anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes in half, avoid lollipops, eat only when I could watch them.

I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner.

After 9/11, new security measures not only added longer lines and earlier check-ins, but took away our privilege of carrying knitting needles or our favorite moisturizer on board with us. Although we want to be safe when we fly, in some ways it all just adds to the misery of our experience.

My cousins and I used to play Beatle wives. We all wanted to be married to Paul, but John was O.K. too. None of us wanted Ringo. Or even worse, George.

I have a fondness for writing about precocious, troubled teenagers, who are alienating, but kind of endearing. It's from remembering so clearly that time in my own life. I experienced myself as more dramatically troubled than I was, but I just remember how it felt.