The party was a success. Though I had no magician, no Spiderman, no fairy-wings making station, I did have almost thirty howling little girls and boys trashing my house worse than touring rockers. For the adults I had beer and pizza and was prepared to make Vodka tonics, having bought a dozen limes. But in the ensuing juvenile melee I forgot. Chet, just turning four, wanted to open presents the moment the first guest arrived. Ava wanted to light the candles. It was an entire afternoon of telling them to wait. The ice-cream cake was Carvel's in honor of our move to New York.

Their mom left for Germany and then on to India with her boyfriend the day before. Still, I had help from Lucia the nanny and my friend Michele and babysitters Nora and Sean. I exploited their pity mercilessly and had them all working their asses off. Both kids were showered with toys (how I'll get them all to New York who knows). They seemed happy but I think the fact that it was actually a going away party masquerading as early birthday parties weighed on them. I just remember the photo I have of Ava, four years ago, her first after her mom left. I had scored a dream job teaching screenwriting in France and cashed in the business class ticket they offered for four coach ones so Lucia and the kids could come too. After the week-long course was over we flew from Normandy to St. Tropez to visit her godparents. I bought her a little cake but in France you can buy almost roman candles for birthdays and I stuck this cigar-sized thing on the cake and lit it and sparks flew everywhere and we all sang and the look on her face let me know that we were going to be all right, at least one day.

She never had a look like that yesterday at the party.

My parental duties were hardly over. Two of her friends spent the night and in the morning I took them all for French toast. I wanted to stay as far away from the house as possible. Not only was the inside as I'd described, but the outside the guys came at nine in the morning to chop down the Jacaranda tree. They are magical this time of year, loud purple flowers all over the city, but when they're in your yard they just drive you nuts. Flowers dropped like rain. At eleven before the party I swept and I swept again at three right before the guests arrived. I wanted to cut mine down because I want to landscape the front of the house before I rent it out and besides, the boy who used to live in the house had put a bird cage around the trunk and now, a decade later, it was strangling the tree.

In my mania to efficiently do everything that needs to be done before we move I had the guys come the morning after the party not thinking that watching the tree cut down would make her cry uncontrollably. The first thing I did when we three moved in four years ago was string up a plastic tire swing from one of the Jacaranda's low branches. Though the house back then looked like a huge hippie shack, the swing was delightful. Even though it hung just two feet from the wall and the tree trunk it was ours. Ava started crying, "I love that swing and in New York I won't be able to swing and why do you have to cut down the tree." It broke my heart. Her lovely friend Meaghan put her arm around her and consoled her. After breakfast she begged me to hang it somewhere inside the house. Our house is odd and it was almost possible to hang it from the chain link balcony. What I did do instead is hold onto the rope, hang off the balcony and swing her once or twice. Her face ignited as if I'd put a roman candle on a cake.

It's 10:30 at night and I just finished cleaning from yesterday's party. I also unpacked all the junk that Phaedre, their mother left for me to take to Social Circle, Atlanta, where her mom lives. Behind everything that is happening here in this house now is the fact that Phaedre is gone for at least six months and who knows if it will be much longer? She had asked for the boxes of loose photos and had put them into albums. I just had to take a break from working while to look at them. Ready to start sobbing at any moment I leafed through them while My Favority Things played on the radio. The book began with shots of me hugging her from behind in Greece, in France, in Venice, Santa Monica, in Spain. It felt like very many lifetimes ago. I have dreams much more real to me than those memories. Then she put in shots of our marriage on the hill behind our old house, oh, and before that one picture from my Vegas bachelor party, two days before our marriage, when I was very, very bad. I wonder what she meant by putting it in there? Then Ava when she was so very little and then lots of shots of Chet beached on his belly with Ava toddling around him. I was so ready to cry but no tears came. I just thought, "Yep, that was how it was."

I'm just too excited about what's coming up ahead of me to give a rat's ass about all the mistakes I've made in almost forty-four years.