Rachel and Drew spend the night together

..because I had some more clothes shopping to do (especially so when I realized that I have exactly one black short-sleeve shirt to get me through the summer. That's not enough, folks).

Drew reports that Rachel was OK tonight until dinnertime, when, in his words, she kept dawdling, pushing her food around her plate and singing. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, except that she wanted to blow bubbles and he told her they could go outside and do that only if she finished her dinner in time. He gave her 20-, 15- and 10-minute warnings.

Finally it was 8:30 and he said, "OK, we're done," and took her food away then told her she spent so much time fooling around at dinner that there wasn't any time to blow bubbles. She started crying, and he took her into her room, sat her on his lap and they had a talk.

"I want to be a grownup," she sniffled at one point, "so I can drink wine."

Um, OK.

He went on to explain how important it was that she eat her dinner. "I'm worried that if you don't eat a good dinner, you won't grow up to be big and strong," he said.

"I'm worried, too," Rachel said.

"You are?" Drew answered. "What are you worried about?"

"I worry that Mommy's never going to come back," she said.

"Oh, sweetie, she's just going to the store," he reassured her. "She's going to come back later tonight."

When he told me that over a late dinner (I didn't get home until 9:45), it was like a stab to the heart. For some reason I've been thinking a lot about the fact that Mom was separated from her mother at about Rachel's age. I was missing Rachel a lot at work today; I don't know why, but I was. And when I finished my lunchtime swim, I started thinking about how hard it would be to take this delightful little girl I have and hand her over to a stranger in the hope that we'd be reunited someday.