“Of course you’re not! But this is all the more reason why you should come with me. Get away! Take a break from everything! You’ll get to miss a whole day of school!”

Teddy shakes his head vehemently. “No, Mom! I don’t want to be stuck at Grandma’s for a whole entire weekend! She never has any food and she’s always trying to get me to hike and I hate hiking! Remember that time she lost me?”

Which time? When she walked so far ahead of him on a birding trail because she was in hot pursuit of a stupid blue heron that it took him fifteen minutes to catch up to her and he almost didn’t because he was six? Or the time she came to Boston to visit and lost him near the swan boats in the Public Garden because someone asked for directions to Beacon Hill and she decided just to walk them there, without saying more to him than “Wait here—I’ll be right back”? (Which he didn’t, because she wasn’t. And because he was eight.) “Please. Don’t remind me.”

So maybe he’s safer if he doesn’t come. But hearing his refusal, seeing his face contort in misery at the thought of spending an extended amount of time with me—“a whole entire weekend?!”—is too much for me. Remembering the road trips we’d taken over the years—to the tip of Cape Cod, throughout New England, down to New York—and how many hours we used to spend together so peacefully and without conflict in hotel rooms and diners, over pancakes and chicken fingers, makes my throat seize and the tears start. When Teddy goes upstairs I duck into the bathroom, forgetting to turn on the overhead fan before the trumpet of nose-blowing starts.

Not that it matters: the People Puppets aren’t stupid. They’re witnessing their first family fight, and there’s nowhere for any of us to hide. Whose idea was it to have complete strangers in the house?

Back in the living room, with the dog in the sling in my lap and a fistful of Kleenex, I pretend to be hard at work on a new Well/er piece (“Is communal living good for the soul?” “Why long-term houseguests can be good for your marriage [no really!]”), when I’m actually checking Sari Epstein’s feed. Sari in child’s pose. Sari painting with watercolors. Sari deep in an evening gratitude meditation by candlelight. Sari drinking tea and journaling before bed. Sari with her palms together, head bowed, telling everyone to sign up for the Noble Journey creativity workshop this weekend because space is limited. I creep on all the photos, watch the short videos, spy the expensive couches, rugs, the diffuse light from the vast high ceilings in her home yoga and art studio, the foot-high bed with super-fluffy down duvet and far too many throw pillows. Except for the ridiculous throw pillows and the stupid journaling, she is perfect. I would trade my life for hers in a second.

I’m still sniffling when Nick sits down on the couch across from me. For once he’s not in full costume, but he’s still wearing his hoof-shoes and hoof-hands, which he taps, like a drummer, on his legs. I think of Sari Epstein in her perfect yoga pants in her perfect house with her perfect steady-creativity-seminar-income lifestyle, which does not require her to house hoof-wearing People Puppets to pay the bills, and I want to die all over again. I can tell that he means well, that he wants to try to make me feel better—to tell me about how, when he was Teddy’s age, he didn’t want to spend time with his parents, either—how it’s normal to separate and differentiate.