“The kids are fine.” I force my fingers open, flexing them straight. “We still have rough days, but things are definitely better and better.”

“That’s good.” Kris reaches for the open bottle of wine and tops everyone’s glass. “I wish I could say that. The boys are driving me mad.” She hesitates, toys with the stem of her glass. “They’re testing Marc next week.” She hesitates yet again. “They think he may have the same learning disabilities as Andrew.”

There’s a moment of silence on our part as we digest this. “Learning disabilities” sounds pretty nonthreatening compared with the reality Kris lives with. Her five-and-a-half-year-old has therapy nearly every day of the week in an effort to get him ready for kindergarten next year. In an effort to keep him from a future of special education. No woman wants her child segregated, exiled to classrooms of only “special need” kids. It’d be one thing if special education were really special, but unfortunately in Washington it seems to be a place where anyone who doesn’t fit in the mainstream gets dumped.

Dumped into a world of behavioral problems, disabilities, and low expectations.

It’s not the future any mother wants for her child.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if he has the same issues.” Kris’s voice is quiet, calm, but it’s that very calmness that makes us aware of her panic, her desperation. She is calm because she is hoping her calm—that control—will curry favor with the gods.

“What makes you think Marc has the same issues?” Anne asks gently.

“He’s been kicked out of his preschool.”

Anne’s jaw drops in outrage, but Nic, the former teacher, cocks her head, ready to problem-solve. “He’s acting out, then?”

“He doesn’t sit still, doesn’t follow directions, doesn’t line up with the other kids, won’t hold hands with his buddy when they walk to the playground.” Kris draws a breath. “This is how it started with Andrew.”

I picture my Jessica, still hell on wheels, a child who gets her card at school pulled to yellow at least once every couple of weeks. “Marc’s a great kid.”

“And he’s only three,” Anne chimes in.

“Four,” Kris corrects quietly. “Almost five.”

We’re silent again, each thinking. What is it about motherhood that takes all our unfulfilled dreams and transfers them onto our children?

The intervention ends with a whimper, not a bang. After we get off on a tangent discussing Kristine’s problem, and then everyone else’s worries about their kids, they never get back around to me and my Hawaii misbehavior.

I’m grateful for getting off topic, too. I don’t think my friends realize how dangerously close they’re coming to alienating me.