Sometimes, I was a pair with Dad, when he took me to the car wash and let me sit in the front seat while the world outside the car turned soapy white and magical. We would pretend we were in a snowstorm, shivering and hiking over the mountains, and we’d point ahead to a warm house we spotted on the horizon. Or, Dad turned the music up really loud and we played drums on the dashboard in rhythm with the spraying water.

When I was really lucky, I was a pair with Mom, and she read me stories of Akbar and Birbal in bed at night, from those books she had gotten from India. Akbar and Birbal were a pair too: Akbar, the great Mogul emperor in India, and Birbal, his wise counselor, who always had a clever solution to his problems. Birbal was very smart and also very funny, sort of like me (even Mom said so). I loved all those stories, but my favorite was “The Tale of the Tough Question.” An important visitor to the king’s court, eager to make Birbal look bad, asked him if he would prefer a hundred easy questions or one tough question. Birbal asked for the tough question and the visitor said, “Which came first, the hen or the egg?” and Birbal replied, “The hen.” When the visitor asked how that could be, Birbal said he’d already asked his one question and was not allowed another. So clever, that Birbal!

Mom packed up almost everything in my room when she changed it into Not My Room Anymore. But after putting that Akbar and Birbal book in the cardboard box, she took it out again. She flipped through the pages and smiled, then she put the book aside before she taped up the cartons and moved them to the garage. She keeps that book in her bedroom, on a small bookshelf next to the comfy chair. Sometimes, when she can’t sleep, Mom turns on the small lamp, sits in the comfy chair and reads one of the stories from the book.

Her favorite story is different than mine: “The Tale of the Most Loved Possession,” in which the king fights with his queen and banishes her from his palace, telling her she can take only her most loved possession. The heartbroken queen consults Birbal, and the next day, she packs up her young son to leave. When the king realizes that the boy is her most loved possession and she’s willing to leave behind all her jewels and riches, he changes his mind. Mom reads the story in a soft voice, but loud enough for me to hear. She always feels better afterwards, and so do I. I loved being a pair with Mom, and we get to do it now even more than Before.

Everyone seems to find their pair. Now, Dad has a girlfriend most of the time. She changes a few times a year, and they always go to fancy restaurants—even fancier than Alfredo’s or the Spaghetti House, but without the crayons and paper table covers. Instead of playing tic-tac-toe or our drawing game while they wait, Dad and his girlfriend drink wine and talk about movies they’ve seen or trips they’re planning. He never does any of the things he used to do with us, though. He never takes her to the car wash.