My Aunt Lorraine, who was named after a comb (Lorraine was a brand), marched into my hospital room a few days after my son was born and gave me what I've come to refer to as THE SPEECH. She said, arms folded, that every man, no matter what he says, wants to have a son named after him. She was 12 years older than I and had had a son a year before whom she'd named Frank…

We have friends who live on the coast of Maine. They used to own an inn, and for years they invited us there every Memorial Day weekend. And we went. And we made memories. Now they own a house. My youngest daughter was married there two summers ago. That was the last time I was in Maine. Life gets in the way of living. Too much to do. So little time. Somebody can't get away for a week or a weekend, so no one gets away.

She hasn't called me Mimi yet, but she's close. I can tell. I say, MiMiMiMi - I sing-song it, actually, and she furrows her little forehead and studies my pursed lips with Alexander Fleming-like concentration (Hmm. What's that in my petri dish?) And I know, I am positive, that she is silently practicing the words she soon will speak aloud: Mimi. My Mimi.

The TV is on and the 6 o'clock news is all bad. Someone was stabbed. Someone was shot. Someone brought a gun to school. Someone left a 2-year-old on a bus. More U.S. soldiers have been killed and terrorists are everywhere. ``It's a horrible world,'' I tell my daughter. ``Not in this room,'' she says, her 10-month-old sitting on her lap clapping her hands and smiling.

Strange, the things that break your heart, then suddenly don't one day. A school bus stops across the street. It lurches and screeches and then starts up again. I watch it from my window, see the shadows of children inside, and I think, when did this stop hurting? For a long time after my youngest child finished school, that sound made me ache. I missed what it meant -