Like Two Ships in the Night. . .

"Are you using anything?"

It was a bottom-ten moment in my life, one of those lopsided, immensely awkward "conversations" in which I spent most of the time wide-eyed and horrified.

Oh, and did I mention I was 25, and not, say, 14 or 15?

Surely, by the time a person has packed in a quarter century of living, she should be through with those kinds of mother-daughter conversations.

Ah, but I wasn't much of a dater in my younger years. And my mom, pushing 60 at the time, was more of a looker than I could ever hope to be. Thus the delayed motherly talk, one filled with a strange mixture of hope and desperation.

By the way, I was the desperate one, while she was the one brimming with the hope that I was gettin' down wit' my bad self.

Eventually, just to end the "conversation", I had to promise her that I could, in fact, see my bad self from there.

Please, God, may I never repeat such a conversation with either of my children...

May they, just like me, happen upon someone who is kind and patient and handsome (or beautiful) and surprisingly stable, despite the influence of cable T.V.

If Eric and Allison are lucky enough to emulate their parents, they, too, can look forward to futures filled with deep love, plenty of laughs and, when away at work, that constant yearning to be back on home turf, where nothing terribly interesting ever happens, but it happens together and that is just fine with you.

That, if you ask me, is a happy ending in the making.