EXCERPT (from The Red Nightie Network)

It was one of those last minute, scene-of-the-crime persuasive purchases I always seem to make at the pit of depression - for $5.99, a blood-red shortie nightgown with spaghetti straps piped in ecru lace.

I took it off the sale rack and hid it under several pair of stockings, the old-fashioned kind to use with a garter belt. I knew it was silly to resist the acquiescence to pantyhose, but something in me rebelled at that elastic clutching my stomach as if it were punishment for being born female. Gilbert's, a department store that had seen better days, was the last bastion for regular stocking s like these without nurse seams or that sexy ribbing that projected and image I didn't intend. So I cleaned out the entire cubby-hole of Suntan, size A. It was a long drive and I didn't want to come back any sooner than was necessary.

Especially with my son Benjamin in tow. He was three days out of the hospital and for all I knew, three days from returning. I looked at his black eye and felt a tug at my heart. A memento form a chance meeting with a Fisher-Price xylophone. It happens to every kid. Usually the parents take a photograph and it gets lost in an album somewhere, faded pen on the back: "Ben's first shiner." But because Ben's blood lacked a certain clotting factor he needed transfusions to control the bleeding that would not stop of its own accord, not even beneath the surface. I didn't need pictures.

He kept dragging his feet under the stroller. He was bored, too old to be confined. I didn't blame him. I hurried to finish my shopping. It felt as if people were staring: did they think I was some kind of terrible mother, hog-tying a four-year-old (with a black eye, no less) down like that? The unspoken insinuations made me feel guilty. But every mundane outing without the stroller turned into a risk. Just as tentative a risk as letting him run into a group of unfamiliar children had been. How was I to know they were miniature guerrillas, armed with xylophones? Deep down I knew it could have just as easily been a bump into playground equipment or a friendly punch form a five-year-old establishing territorial limits. I couldn't keep him in a plastic bubble like that kid I read about in the newspaper.