Excerpt from Chapter 1: "MOMMY?"

I’m not God. I’m not an angel.  I’m just a man. - Brady, age 5

How many parents can honestly say parenting is easy? Even the luckiest people, with the easiest children, face frequent challenges that they feel ill-equipped to handle. For my daughter Jaime, we had all known that parenting would be especially challenging, because she had a history of drug abuse. Even so, she immediately took to her role as Brady’s mother. Jaime enjoyed mothering and adored her son. She nursed him, nurtured him and as customary in the Jewish religion, gave him a Hebrew name: Shai Chaim, meaning Gift of Life.  The name suits him.

         
A few years later, in the preschool playground, I spotted my grandson, this little Gift of Life, playing with another little boy.                                    

“Brady, there’s your mommy!” he called out.    

For a brief second, Brady looked as if he were expecting someone else. Then seeing me his face broke out in a big smile of acceptance.
“Mommy!” he yelled with excitement.  

Taken aback, I actually turned to look behind me until I realized he was calling me.   

          
Until that moment, Brady had always referred to me as “Mama.” He couldn’t pronounce the “gr” sound when he was first forming his words, so that’s what stuck. When Brady would hear my daughter call to me, sometimes he would mimic her. I used to chuckle to myself when I’d hear him yelling “Mom!” in full voice from the top of the stairs, sounding just like my daughter. It struck me as cute. I never saw it as a premonition.  

Life is so unpredictable, full of irony. Irony, however, can come at such a cost.