When you’re a teenager, May equals prom season.  There is this sharp focus on this one day — a dance that fills some with dread and others with elation.  When you’re an infertile woman, May equals Mother’s Day season, a minefield-of-a-holiday that is uniquely painful because it’s filled with our desires for the future and memories of celebrating our mothers from our past (and this doesn’t even touch on the more complicated situations of those going through the day without a mother either due to death or estrangement).

And it is also tornado season.

Every week I get the episode of This American Life, a radio show that plays on NPR.  This week, the theme was prom, and the podcast was a rerun from 2001 that I somehow missed prior to this point (or maybe heard and just don’t remember).

As I listened to the first act, I inexplicably kept thinking about Mother’s Day.  Which was strange because there is nothing in the act about Mother’s Day.

The radio show starts out with the story of the prom in Hoisington, Kansas when a tornado ripped through the town while the kids were dancing, destroying 1/3rd of the buildings.  Their prom theme was “Lost in the Moment” and that pretty much summed up this bizarre story — the kids, accustomed to the lights flickering and random blackouts in their town, kept dancing, oblivious that anything beyond a rainstorm was happening outside.  And then they left the building to confront this enormous devastation.  Their homes were gone.  Their town was leveled.

Why the hell did I keep thinking of Mother’s Day through their story?

When I sat down to write about Mother’s Day about a half hour ago, I decided to look back at what I wrote last year.  Apparently, I likened the entire holiday to tornadoes.   Not remembering this post at all but rereading my words felt eerie, like I was walking through the aftermath of a storm.  That strange stillness.

I think — for me — the analogy still holds.

That’s the best way I can explain how Mother’s Day sometimes felt.  That you think you’re prepared and you do things to protect yourself, but the day howls through you.  But afterward, while there is a surge of sadness and it feels like it should be more of…something…the day also sort of gets written off with a shrug of nervous laughter when you realize that Mother’s Day is no more painful than Monday.

By which I mean that Monday is pretty damn painful.  It is no harder to not be able to build your family on a holiday than it is to not be able to build your family on an ordinary day.  Infertility is emotionally painful whether or not you are experiencing it on a day that has greeting card exchanges as part of the rhythm or not.  But, at the same time, just as it would be foolish to ignore the tornado alarms and say to yourself, “suck it up–nothing bad is going to happen” it would be equally foolish (and G-d help the person who suggests it) for you to just write off whatever internal alarms go off when you think about the holiday.  Everyone should be wrapping themselves in a virtual comforter whenever they hear those alarms go off–whether they occur on Mother’s Day or Christmas or a random third Wednesday in the month of June.

As does the explanation of Mother’s Day when you are parenting after infertility.

Mother’s Day after infertility has that eerie quality that comes after you’ve weathered a dangerous storm–the sort of storm where you could really lose yourself, and some do.  It is a beautiful calm, one that I feel lucky to get to experience and wish all of my friends could too.  And at the same time, as you celebrate the day, it comes with this acknowledgment that within all of this beauty is also the figurative branches down and overturned signs signaling your friends back in the trenches.  And it’s not just about your friends back in the trenches–it’s about your old self too.  Remembering that woman.

The South is still reeling from the recent storms that devastated towns and took more than 300 lives.  It is the second deadliest tornado outbreak in America, the last one being in 1925.  The prom story above, the storms in the South… these are the third sort of tornado, the ones mirrored analogously in the emotional experiences of those navigating loss; of facing another reminder of life without their children.  There is no wiping of the brow from dodging a bullet, no marveling of the strange beauty.  It’s simply devastation.

In the This American Life episode, the reporter and a prom-goer state:

Usually the story of prom is one of disappointment.  You’re in the bathroom crying during the slow dance, or you throw up at the hotel room party, or you go home feeling silly for having been so excited about something so meaningless.  The teenagers in Hoisington got the kind of prom story everybody wants.  They got a legendary prom; the night that actually did change their lives.

It was a prom that taught a lesson.  You know?  It became… our cars and clothes weren’t so important and family and friends… it taught a big lesson about humanity, I think, to everybody there.  Everybody had a new perspective of life walking out of that prom.

None of these subjects intertwine, they are more like tines on the same fork.  It’s May.  It’s prom season.  It’s tornado season.  It’s Mother’s Day.  And yet, there is something that we can learn when we hold up each one against the other.  The way prom can become inflated, and how it behooves us to spend more time thinking about our high school friendships and relationships than thinking about the perfect corsage.  The way a tornado can either leave us unscathed or level us — and how we don’t know how it will go until after it happens.

The way Mother’s Day can be a fantastic moment for one person and a day of dread for another — and neither person should be made to feel terrible about their reaction.  It’s sort of in the same vein as the fact that no two people will experience prom in the same way.  And two houses, standing right next to one another, can have very different outcomes when the same storm passes through the town.

All of this is a long way of saying (beyond listen to This American Life if you’re looking for a distraction this weekend) that if you’re celebrating the holiday this weekend, have a wonderful time and don’t feel guilty about enjoying it.  And if Mother’s Day is salt in the wound, know that I’m holding you in my heart and thinking about you.  And if Mother’s Day simply fills you with anger and makes you want to spit, may I suggest throwing ice cubes outside?  I learned that from Our Family Beginnings — brilliant because unlike using cheap dishes, there is no clean-up; the ice simply melts and is gone.

May your life-prom be filled with pink tulle, may you weather every storm, and may a future Mother’s Day hold exactly what your heart needs.

Much more exciting than that Sunday-holiday-which-shall-not-be-named is Saturday’s Free Comic Book Day.  It has been on my calendar for several months now, and we planned the day around a trip to my favourite comic book store.

I know — Josh likes to say that I’m a 12-year-old boy trapped in a woman’s body.

I’m not that excited about any of the ones they’re giving away, but that’s sort of not the point since I obviously have the means to buy whatever $2.99 comic books I want.  The day is a celebration of the almighty comic book.  It’s to get new readers to think about graphic novels.  It’s to bring back readers who have been away for a long time.

So we’ll be there since I wanted to pick up the rest of the Daytripper series (Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon are my favourite artists — not just because they’re twins — their drawings/inking work is gorgeous).  And to show you just how cool comic books can be, here is a video of Moon inking a drawing.

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Instead of ComOnNaPro, I want to try something new this week and if people like it, will figure out how to keep it going indefinitely.  In other words, add your feedback about this idea in general in your comment so I can gauge interest.

We are approaching the 5th anniversary of the Friday Blog Roundup (I know, freakin’ crazy).  And in honour of this fact, I’d like to kick off the next five years with an idea I introduced over at BlogHer in my new section (are you reading my new Blogging & Social Media section?  Because you should.  You can even subscribe to it so you only get the posts in my section: http://www.blogher.com/topicrss/10/10/feed as well as follow me on Twitter at @BlogHerBlogging).

This is how the new idea would work:

Every Friday Blog Roundup would continue to look as normal — my blatherings at the top and a roundup of a few posts that I read this week that stuck with me (I get asked this a lot, so I’ll just answer it here — the posts that I feature are simply posts that I read and was still thinking about after I walked away from the screen.  That’s my only criteria for choosing them) — but the comment section would become an open thread of the best posts you read this week.

So it would be more of a conversation of great posts — a big Stone Soup approach to sharing must-read posts, focused entirely on posts WITHIN our community (in other words, anything ALI-related which is the only guideline I use for constructing the Roundup.  If the blog fits somewhere on the blogroll, their posts can fit in the Roundup).  BUT the second part is that each week, I’d gather up all the posts left in the thread and post them a second time in the body of the next Roundup under a section called “second helpings.”  So you’d see the posts a few times — in the comment section during the week and again in the “second helping” section of the next Roundup.  So really good posts have an extra two week lifespan.

Makes sense?

So if you want to participate, here’s what you should do:

• Read posts and bookmark anything that really strikes you during the week (this week, for instance, runs April 29–May 6).
• Once I post the weekly Roundup, leave a comment with a link to the blog post you want people to read as well as a brief explanation.  Please include the brief explanation.  My blurbs are not only to entice you, but to give you a heads up before you click over since not every person is in a mental space to read every post.
• Yes, you can leave more than one post, but please curate thoughtfully.  In other words, ask yourself if this is something you think everyone needs to read because it really resonated with you or you’re really proud of it.
• Yes, you can nominate one of your own posts.  You can highlight someone else’s post or you can highlight your own.  Be proud of your words and stand by them — you did the work, you thought the thoughts, own it and shout it.
• Come back and read the thread throughout the week.  The thread remains open from Friday until the following Wednesday.  Any comments added after Wednesday evening will not be included in the “second helping” section, though feel free to still leave comments since people may be checking the old threads in the future.
• I will scoop up all posts left and run the links (though not the explanations due to length) in the next Roundup in a special new section titled “second helpings.”  This next Roundup will also look the same as usual (with the additional new section), and a new open thread will start again.

Makes sense?  So get started this week.  Posts must be published between April 29th and May 6th to be included.  Anything that doesn’t fit that guideline or that isn’t part of the ALI-community will not be included.  And as you read this week, bookmark so you’ll be prepared for the next open thread.

And for this first time, please give me feedback on what you think of this idea.  No one has to participate, no one has to read it, but it’s there to highlight more posts.  Think of it like our own, private, ALI-StumbleUpon.  I still want to point out the great stuff I read during the week, but this gives you a chance to point out the great stuff you read during the week, all in one, succinct space.  And people bored, looking for good posts, can always come to the thread and find one.  And frankly, I think it can be eye-opening to see which posts that you wrote resonated with another person enough for them to add it to the list.  As well as for other readers to see which posts you are most proud of that you added to the list.

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And now, the blogs…

I’m not sure how one can read Mrs. Spit’s post “How to Live Forever” and not cry.  In a note to her son, she explains how another blogger walked to raise money for March of Dimes in his name, though prior to the event, the blogger lost her own son.  I bawled reading: “You are remembered. Your memories as close as our breath. You have entirely outlived your tiny bodies, and your presence reminds us of the need for mercy and goodness. You are not here, but you are not gone.”  Absolutely gorgeous.

Kate, Uncensored has a post musing about whether she would undo her experience with infertility if this were possible.  She explains, “I’ve often said that I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. Yet, I wouldn’t wish it away for myself. I have learned so much about myself throughout the process and since.”  I love her list — what would you add to yours?

Fertility Challenged in Florida unpacks the idea of having a second child.  Namely, why they will never put themselves back on the trying-to-conceive roller coaster but how they may build their family a different way.  It was a very interesting read.

Lastly, The Long Way Around has a post about other people’s baby announcements.  Namely, the joy she is expected to feel upon hearing someone’s news.  She writes, “I think people assume that just because you are now trying to conceive and have babies on the brain, that any baby news is going to bring you joy.  What they don’t realize is that after you have suffered a miscarriage, others’ baby news is the last thing you want to hear about.”  She gives a great breakdown, separating the news from the expectation.  Go weigh in on her question.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Free Comic Book Day!  What do you think of the open thread idea to carry forth the Roundup into the next 5 years (I sort of want it up and running before the anniversary in a few weeks)?  And lots of great posts to read.  In fact, there could be more great posts to read: add them into the comment section below and then come back later to see what other posts have been added (and please read the posts).

You knew it was just a matter of time before the questions started in earnest.  Last night, I was flipping off the television after we watched our nightly 15 minutes of movie time, and in the moment between the DVD player shutting off and the television going dark, a flash of a rerun Daily Show played because the television was tuned to Comedy Central.

As we walked to their room, ChickieNob casually asked whose picture had been on the screen.

“That was Osama bin Laden,” I admitted.

“I actually knew that,” she said mysteriously.  “Where is he right now?”

We were standing in front of the mirror, both facing it, so I told her reflection, “He’s actually dead.  He died because when they went in to take him from the house, there was a battle and he died during it.”  I wanted to make it clear that this was related to war.  That if she did something we deemed “terrible” (such as, oh, I don’t know, sitting on her brother for the 11th time), the army wasn’t going to come busting into the house to take her down.

I watched her reflection in the mirror as well as the Wolvog’s, who had come up behind us at that moment after retrieving one of his stuffed animals from downstairs.  Both looked surprised at this development — that Osama bin Laden was dead.  The Wolvog tested out a response:

“Is that a good thing?  So now he really can’t come out and hurt people again?”

“It’s something that had to be done.  We never want to kill a person, but that can happen during a war when two people are fighting.”

We retired to their room so they could ask the rest of their questions.  Taking Tash’s advice (was it Tash’s advice?  I feel like I need to roundup all my posts about talking about death), I was careful to answer just the question asked and not elaborate.  And in doing so, the twins sort of naturally kept the idea of death mostly out of the conversation.  They asked what they needed answers for and we didn’t push anything extra.  Here’s what we spoke about:

• Does Osama bin Laden always wear white? (he was wearing white in the picture on the screen): I’m not familiar with most of his wardrobe.
• Will they show pictures of him dead? (I thought this was an interesting one in light of the announcement that the pictures would not be shown): No, President Obama promised today that they wouldn’t show pictures that would upset you.
• Why won’t they show the pictures? Out of respect.  At the end of the day, he was a human being.  And we need to have a basic level of respect for all human beings — even ones who don’t treat us nicely.
• Did he want to hurt kids? Yes.  He wanted to hurt everybody.
• Did he ever hurt a kid? Yes.
• Did he ever do anything bad?  Or did he just want to do bad things? (and this is where we first broached 9/11): Have you ever heard people talk about September 11th?  Before you were born, there was a scary day where he attacked two buildings in America.  And he hurt a lot of people that day.
• Where were the buildings? One was in D.C. — that’s the Pentagon — and the other was in New York.
• Was the New York one near Uncle R? No, he lives in a different part of the city.
• Have I ever seen the New York one? (they’ve seen the Pentagon numerous times) No, because they’re not there anymore. (This answer brought about a long period of silence).  Do you know when Green Day sings, “and the towers fall?”  That’s what they’re talking about.  The day the towers fell — that these big buildings fell down.
• What will happen to his family? I don’t know.  I don’t know where they are right now.
• Are they sad? I am positive they are sad.
• Are they bad guys too? I don’t really know what they think.  It’s important to remember that they didn’t choose to be in his family; they didn’t necessarily choose to be connected to him.  They shouldn’t be blamed because their dad made bad decisions just like you shouldn’t be blamed if I make a bad decision.  Maybe they think the same things he did, or maybe they were really upset that their dad wanted to do terrible things.  We don’t know them so we can’t say what they think.
• And they’ll never show a picture of him dead and then I’ll see it and get scared? No, they’ll never show him dead and if they ever did, I would be very careful that none of us saw that picture.  President Obama is being respectful because he was someone’s baby — right?  Everyone has a mommy, and he was someone’s baby.  He was someone’s daddy.  He was a person to them and out of respect for his family, President Obama is not going to make them feel badly and show this picture.  Because they didn’t choose to have a son or father who acted like that.  It’s okay to be angry with Osama bin Laden, but we don’t hurt other people because we’re angry with bin Laden.

I wanted them to walk away from the conversation realizing that Osama bin Laden was just a man — not a robot with superpowers or a magical being who can utter words and kill you instantly — he was just a person.  A person who was born and a person who could die and a person who can’t come back (we didn’t broach the many-headed hydra theory since, you know, trying to keep them from crapping their pants in fear).

And therefore, he can be feared because some humans are damn scary, but our fears need to be in check because, again, he’s a human with human limitations.  And I also wanted them to see that he was a human, which meant that he made choices.  And he made some godawful ones.

And I wanted them to remember that he was a human and that we’re often interconnected in ways that we can’t control, and I want them to compartmentalize this person rather than apply his actions to many.  After all, one day I’m going to have to explain the Holocaust, and I don’t want them to apply their feelings about Hitler to all Germans any more than I want them to apply their feelings about Osama bin Laden to other people.

I wanted them to remember that he was a human to bring him down to the proper size.

So we focused the remainder of our conversation on the fact that he was human.  That his decisions are his own and he needs to accept consequences for his actions; just as much as my decisions are my own and I need to accept consequences.  And just as he shouldn’t have held me accountable for decisions that my government made — that he shouldn’t have wanted to hurt me since I wasn’t involved in those decisions — that we shouldn’t want to hurt anyone else just because they had something in common with Osama bin Laden.  Because if we do, we’re essentially doing what he did, which was paint humanity with a large, sloppy brush.

The questions ran out abruptly, and after about ten straight minutes of talking about him, they asked about our weekend plans, signaling that they were full.  Full of information.  And it was time for bed.

Posting this in case in can help anyone else with their future conversations.

The first story was just interesting and/or helpful.  A couple in England who experienced recurrent pregnancy loss due to high levels of natural killer cells were treated with three injections of fats from egg yolks and soy beans.  Afterwards, she carried twins to term.  Simply seemed newsworthy.

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The next continues the new trend of reprolit — fiction that contains an infertility storyline.  We’ve already heard about the horror book, Breed, and now, Salon has a piece about Natalie Portman’s father’s infertility thriller.

I guess I’m just curious about the intended audience since whenever you’re marketing a book, you state who you believe will read the book.  Is it assumed that infertile men and women (Dr. Hershlag’s patients) would be drawn towards this sort of book?  Because we really want to think about stolen embryos?  Because treatments in and of themselves are not enough of a horror show that we need to bathe in a fantasy world of in vitro incest?

Or are we not the audience at all?  And then why is a fertility doctor, one who treats us and knows the emotional landscape of infertility via conversations with the patient writing an infertility thriller?  Is it entertainment at our expense?  If I share how depressed I am with my doctor, I hope he doesn’t use that to create entertainment down the road.

I doubt we’d ever see an oncologist making “Cancer — the board game!” or any other doctor using their area of medical expertise as entertainment.  Which is quite different from using your area of medical expertise as education, as exploring the experience of that disease via fiction.

There are plenty of times that art is used to illuminate — think: Schindler’s List.  Which would be quite different from a Holocaust historian making “Auschwitz! The Musical!”

I don’t know — I’m just curious whether anyone would be interested in a reprolit thriller/horror book?  What about a sensitively-explored piece of fiction that tries to delve into the world of treatments and show the reader what that experience is like?  Do you think there’s a difference?

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Lastly, I read an interesting article about Rosie Pope on the Stir by the ever-enjoyable Jeanne Sager.  She points out that,

If you think it’s hard for women going through infertility to run into an old high school pal who’s pregnant or having to face their best friend cradling a newborn, imagine what it must be like all day, every day, to be face-to-face with a big belly.

And I assume it is hard — for doctors, for people who work in baby-item/maternity stores, for teachers, for women in a same-sex relationship where both are undergoing inseminations, for Rosie Pope.  For me, as a teacher, it was only hard during conference time when I’d be speaking to parents who so clearly knew nothing about their child and didn’t seem to care about the aforementioned child.  I would be holding my face expressionless while thinking: “you could procreate and I can’t?”

So my first thought was whether certain professions/life situations are actually harder or is it entirely dependent on the person?  My gut tells me that it’s entirely dependent on the person.  That you could have infertile ob/gyns who never think about how their patients have what they don’t have and you could have infertile ob/gyns who spend their entire day coveting.

The other point Sager makes in the article is that Pope is a vision of hope:

Pope has given these women a gift. She’s telling them they’re not alone. And in many ways, her son Wellington and her decision to show him off this week is a gift too. He’s the gift of hope, the knowledge that, as she told Life & Style, “Miracles really do happen.”

I totally agree with the first part — putting your story out there means that other people hearing it know that they’re not alone.  It is comforting to hear an element of your life reflected.  But what about that second part — the idea that seeing an infertile woman on the other side of the chasm — does that fill you with hope?  Does it make you feel like things are more possible in your world?

Again, there’s a line and I don’t know where it is.  I liked hearing from people who were successful with treatments when we were starting out treatments because I liked hearing that it had a possibility of working.  If it happened for them, perhaps it could happen for me.

But then there is this line where I am also mindful on the other side of it that someone else’s story is not my story.  That treatments could work for them and not work for me, and both truths exist in this world.  That their success does not translate into increased success in my life.  And in that way, they aren’t hope at all.

What are your thoughts?  Do you (did you) look at another person’s success as hope that you’d be in the same place one day?  Or is it simply an acknowledgment that treatments/adoption/surrogacy can work, but it has no bearing on your world whatsoever?

Updated at the bottom

On September 11th, I worked in a school.  We gathered all of the students, from sixth grade to twelfth grade in the theater to give the news and then broke into smaller rooms until parents could arrive for pick-up.  I had everyone in my room write down the thoughts passing through their head at the moment, and I collected them, xeroxed them, and gave out a copy to all of the middle schoolers who had waited in my room.  I told them that it would be a way to remember where they were, who they were with, what they were thinking.  In that moment in time, trying to contain and comfort preteens, creating a written time capsule seemed like the only way to fill that space.  All of us were too numb, too distraught, too scared to do much more than silently jot down disjointed thoughts.

The students from pre-K to fifth grade were in a different building on the campus.  They went into lockdown in their classrooms and while the teachers quietly whispered from room to room, they continued with lessons until they were released early from school.  Years later, those students expressed how terrible it felt to be cognizant that something was wrong, something was happening, and to not be told even in age-appropriate terms.  They could tell the adults were upset.  They could see students out the window walking across the campus, crying.  Not being told made them distrust the teachers; made them wonder what they weren’t being told.

And wouldn’t we feel the same way if we knew someone had information and they weren’t telling us for our own good?  Children are human beings just as much as adults.

I told the twins about Osama Bin Laden when they woke up this morning.  I explained that there was this terrible man (“Worse than Darth Vader?  What about Voldemort?  Was he worse than Voldemort?”) who had been hiding for almost 10 years, and we finally caught him last night.  I stopped short at telling them that we had actually killed Bin Laden because I didn’t know how to explain that without opening the door to a new room of greyness.

I didn’t tell them what he had done except to explain that he was worse than Voldemort in the sense that he was real.  That he had hurt at least 50,000 people; again, not ready to explain that when I said “hurt,” I mostly meant “killed.”  They asked if this meant that there would be no more wars — after all, isn’t that how life continues in Harry Potter’s world?  Get rid of the bad guy and all bad things stop — and I had to explain there probably would be wars in the future.  That the world was both a safer and equally dangerous place because of this.

In Judaism, we don’t celebrate the death of an enemy.  It’s part of the Pesach seder, therefore, that idea was fresh in their minds.  I told them they might see adults happy today, but what we were celebrating wasn’t about Osama Bin Laden.  We weren’t celebrating the fact that we hurt him.  We were celebrating that we could give closure to the families he hurt.  We were celebrating that he couldn’t do anything bad again.  I made the celebration about us vs. being happy over what the enemy was losing.

After they each had a pre-school cuddle, we went downstairs to breakfast and packing bags and making lunches.  They went to kindergarten as if this were an ordinary day.  I went home and held my breath.  One day, I’m going to have to explain September 11th to them.  I’m going to have to explain the Holocaust.  I’m going to have to explain that J.K. Rowling didn’t dream up Voldemort from scratch, that he is an amalgamation of all the evil that exists in the world; that inhabits very real people.  That Osama Bin Laden was human, just like we’re human.  Which makes it all the more horrific.

It is easy to compartmentalize evil robots and evil aliens — we’re not cut from the same cloth and we can use that as an explanation.  It is something quite different to wrap your mind around the fact that it was a choice.  That he chose to kill people not because it’s coded in his DNA, part of who he is as something inhuman, but because he wanted to do it.

I would like to keep them like those students, closed up in the room, pretending that we can keep them oblivious because I do believe that sometimes, ignorance is bliss.  But hearing how the students processed being kept in that glass bubble — being able to see out and know something was happening, yet unable to hear it or get close — made me pop the one around the ChickieNob and Wolvog.

Update:

After school, I asked the twins if their teacher had spoken about Osama Bin Laden with the class.  They both gave a nervous laugh and told me that she hadn’t.  I asked if any of the kids in their class were talking about it, and the Wolvog stared out the window, thinking.  “We’re the only ones who seemed to know,” he admitted.  “Except for probably the 5th graders.  But they don’t talk to us.”

Which led us to a final talk about why parents might not want to talk about Osama Bin Laden with their children, and how that was fine too — there was no right way or wrong way to approach a topic.

All of my fears that others would get to the kids first were unfounded this time.  They probably could have skated through the next few days oblivious.

The only mark left behind was a casual remark later in the evening by the Wolvog that his imaginary friend Jancefer has a friend whose father died recently in the war.  How recently?  Sunday.  This friend’s mother had also died a while back (“She was old.  Like over 200.”), and this current military death left this imaginary person an orphan.  The Wolvog relayed this to me from the back seat, his voice breaking as he repeated several times that this imaginary boy had lost his father.

The questions, the imaginary friends living out their worst fears — it’s all in the vein of trying on dress-up clothes, trying to see how it feels, rolling around in it uncomfortably.  And I’m just grateful that in their current life, it’s all just play-acting.  It’s all just practice and pretend.  Because it’s dawning on them that for some very real families, that truth hits closer to home.