This is how I’ve felt lately:

Now that Mr. Ben is taking the Bar even as we SPEAK, it’s even worse. I can’t concentrate on anything. My joints hurt; I’m tugging at my hair like I’m nine years old again and going to CTY for the first time with the big kids. … God, I remember how scary that was. The funny thing is of course that the fear never went away. Any time I approached a summer camp experience, even if I’d been at the very same place the year before, I worked myself into a Gordian Knot of anxiety about the unknown. Once I spent the first few days of camp in the infirmary recovering from what should have been excitement.

I’m older now! More resilient! And Xanax is my back up plan. (That’s a bit like “God is my co-pilot,” what?) I did manage to make gnocchi this weekend from scratch, with the help of a chipper friend, in between meals out with my two brothers and sundry male cousins. And I took my new shoes to Ditmas Park, to Chinatown, and, as a reward for them because they’d been so good, on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. That last was a bit too much for them, or rather for me, but what is life if not one learning experience after another?