When I look back and think of those nights alone in my school, it is hard not think of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.” It was one of those stories that made me cry as a young girl, which made me love it even more, that poor one-legged tin soldier falling in love with the ballerina he thinks has only one leg as well. I did it for the recital one year, remember? And, Jeff, I made you be the soldier because there were no boys taking class that year. You hated it, and your father told me he thought I was making a big mistake. He said if you turned out homosexual that it was all my fault, and that if I made you wear tights, he’d report me to Social Services. I can’t tell you how many times over the years (the many young women calling us to ask where you were, how you could be so heartless) I told your father that if only he had let me put you in tights, perhaps to play Romeo, or even the prince in “The Nutcracker,” that you might have been much kinder in the way you treated others.

There was a time I hoped you were gay, thinking that might explain everything, and then it could be so easy; you would just come out and find a nice man, who would also call me Mom, and live happily ever after. Because, at the risk of saying too much, I do need to tell you this—a playboy can still be relatively attractive in his 40s (where you are right now, with your young new person, who really does seem quite nice even if she could be your daughter), but once you turn 50, it begins to get dicey, son. It does. It is a fact, and who cares what those like Hugh Hefner do? An ascot and a martini will not get rid of wrinkles and crepey, scaly skin and the inability to perform without medications. Get to 70 and 80 and then it is just sad to act like a playboy. Time is always relevant. Get to 70 and 80 and the joke is how poor vision is your best friend in the bedroom. But more true is how important real love and devotion are. That is what I want for you.

The good news for you, Jeff (young you who did not want to be in the tin-soldier show), was that all the parents thought it was a sad and dark way for their little girls to end the year, and so the next recital was back to buttercups and butterflies and little rays of sunshine, and you got to do what you liked best, which was help me paint props for two months, our basement filled with our work—castles and flowers and bright-blue skies—and then you opened and closed the curtains on the night of the show. We had so much fun doing that, didn’t we?