This weekend is the junior prom, and I only have one junior.

Because my books usually are published in May, on the night my son Martin steps out with his girlfriend, I won't be among the proud parents. Marty's gal pal, Elizabeth, and her twin, Adam, have also been named to prom court. I hope one of them is crowned royalty, and I'm so proud of them all. They're good students and good kids.

And me? I'll be one a plane to somewhere, and my whole stomach will be filled with longing.

This is the real price (not the creative pressure to do it right for once, the time stress, not the shredded nerves, anticipation of good reviews, horror at bad ones, the negotiations) that we pay in this work. The real price is the absence from the events that mark the milestones of our lives, because they mark our children's lives. I'll miss my tiny first-grade Mia reading the "Big Welcome" to the first-grade play, "Tiki Tiki Tembo," and I'll miss my college son's finals week and the high school variety show, where Marty will sing (and no one but a few of his school friends know he CAN sing, and how beautifully). He'll sing the old song from 'Camelot,' "If Ever I Would Leave You." And I'll have left him, that night, too. Friends will be there. I hope his dad will be there. I know his brother will.

But not I.

I'll count on those marvels of technology -- cell phones that send pictures, digital cameras. Several hours later, on prom night, I'll see images.

But it won't be the same as helping my boy adjust the orchid on his lapel, or seeing his gal pal shining with her long dark hair and her pretty cream gown. I won't see my young man in his first tuxedo, as I saw his older brother.

Marty knows he won't be prom king. He's not THE popular kid. But because he's genuinely friendly, to all types of kids ("Even the kids who scare me," he says, "So that if they get depressed and decide to shoot everybody, maybe I can talk them out of it.") he is a kid who has a great many buddies, and high school, which for me and for my two older children was a savannah on which we were prey animals, has been a garden for him.

I know you don't care about my kid, or prom night, or any of this. I know that going out and meeting my readers and hoping that 'Cage of Stars' will live up to its promise is important: It's supporting my family and supporting something about which I care deeply, deeply.

But wherever my head and my smile is, come Saturday night, my heart will be in a gym in a little town in southwestern Wisconsin, when the Grand March begins. I'll see in my mind Marty's goofy smile -- we tell him, "You've got a smile you can see a mile..." -- and just as I tuck the others in, mentally, each night I'm away, I'll be clapping for him and kissing him on the cheek.

Jackie

My son, Dan, is among the most intelligent of all my children. He "gets" the deep underpiinnings even in a movie other young men his age prize mostly for the action and special effects. And he doesn't say much, but when he does, it's something you remember.

He rarely used to speak. His words became tangled in a skein of oily yarn on the way from his mind to his hand or his lips, and his efforts to pick apart the threads made him even more frustrated, as the knots caught firmer and the whole thing got more soiled, until it hardly resembled the original insight. "Forget it," he would often say. The bright line that had shot forth no longer was recognizable, no longer worth the effort.

Even in college, at first Dan could not admit that he could not take notes and attend to what was going on in class at the same time. While he did register for learning disability services, he never told his instructors that he needed special accommodations.

His ORIGINAL high school LD supervisor had done her job well -- that is, badly. She had instilled in Dan a belief that would take years of counseling to unravel, a dirty tangle of messages: Lazy. Stupid. Unable to cut it in college.

Though in his final year, he had a wonderful LD teacher, the damage had already been done.

What we didn't know, and Dan didn't know, until he was in high school, was that he didn't have the kind of learning disabilties that can be treated only with a pill. A voracious reader, he could barely fill out an application for a library card. And though he had insights and opinions about many issues, trying to organize them in a way that was coherent was beyond him, without help.

At first, Dan though that handing his LD materials to instructors was "like giving someone a certificate saying you're stupid." And he tried hard to do without. But he couldn't. He fell behind and eventually had to repeat the courses.

Still, a few years before this happened, a woman named Penny Bright had come into our lives.

A speech and language pathologist, and a human being whose name truly suits her. Penny quickly saw that Dan had a non-specific speech and language processing disorder. She suggested a computer program that Dan would take in summer school, one usually administer to third-graders. And he did it, along with the third-graders, whom he taught to shoot hoops during breaks, and by the next year, Dan was expressing himself ever more fluently.

It would still take time to uproot the shame, but now Dan says that he will never give up -- not until he achieves his goal of becoming a chef. Each week, as he has for years, he works with Penny Bright, whose compassion and understanding, when Dan leaps backward after taking ten hesitant small steps forward exceeds all understanding.

Or perhaps it does not.

Perhaps, unlike so many other people supposedly trained to understand that some kids really, truly DO HAVE "learning differences," instead of simply being unmotivated and frustrating in their seeming inability to get organized and their persistent tendency to fiddle around, she can do one thing that no one else did.

She gave our son respect.

She gave him the same respect we gave him.

She gave him help, but more than that, she gave him the same respect she would have given an intelligent kid who needed to walk with a cane but longed to participate in sports -- and finally did, just in a different way from ordinary kids.

May is the month in which speech pathologists such as Penny are celebrated.

In her quest to draw awareness to the topic, so that other families such as ours, drowning in the grief of not really being able to figure out what was wrong, she sent a news release to local newspapers. But no one was much interested. No one usually is. And that is why, until the current era, most kids such as our bright, amiable son ended up living their lives with their song trapped inside them.

But we care. And we celebrate. In our home, Penny Bright is not just a teacher and speech pathologist, she's a hero.

She unlocked Dan's song, and she continues to prod him to work at the doors he needs to unlock in unusual ways -- so that one day, he will do this on his own. It's a long process, and it's a process that would fry anyone. Still, she does it with amazing grace.

If you see this, and have a kid with learning disabilities for whom the usual regimen doesn't seem to work, you may have a child like Dan. And you can find a speech pathologist like Penny, through the national association. And when you do, things will start to fall into place that never made sense before.

And gradually, the pride you always felt for your child, as you desperately tried to instill hope while others tried to rob it from him, may gradually become something he can feel for himself. And there is no greater gift than the chance to feel pride.

So, Penny, this one's for you and other unsung heroes like you. You have helped give kids back to themselves, and healed so many hearts. Ours are among them.

Next week, when you switch on the 'Today' show, you will see my great friend Joyce Maynard talking with Katie Couric about how Joyce, as a 24-year-old, first-time mom, she became obsessed with her daughter Audrey's beauty -- and how that obsession never quite went away.

She'll do so as part of an anthology called "It's a Girl!' compiled by Andi Buchanan for Seal Press, who also did a standout job of creating one called (surprise!) 'It's a Boy!' Since I have heard the first words spoken twice and the latter five times, I have essays in both.

But none of them is about this topic.

Perhaps because I've now been away from my kids for a week, and alone, and the only time I hear their voices is in the background of an exercise tape a friend made for me,

I've been thinking a great deal about each and all of them. I've been thinking about what a great radio deejay Rob would make -- with his righteous heart, caustic tongue, love of music and knowledge of gadgetry. I've been thinking about Dan facing Comp I in summer school -- a writer without hands . Last night, I missed seeing Marty dressed up in his tux on prom court; and Mia is practicing for her play. Will, at 2 1/2, now talks to me on the telephone as if he were five.

But Francie's heart breaks so much when I call that she can barely speak to me. She just says, in a breathy way, "I .. want you home to see the lilacs."

Francie -- how do I explain you?

I, too, am obsessed with Francie's beauty, though not with keeping her thin nor with molding her into any particular style. When I see her, I make her eyes roll by repeating the line from 'The Highwayman' about 'the landlord's black-eyed daughter, twining a dark red love knot into her long black hair...'

But her cute smile and that long black hair aren't the best things about Francie. She's not just smart, either. She's, uh... bossy. She's a strategic planner. If she's ever pulled a punch, it wasn't when I was around. "Dad," she'll say quietly but with intent. "If you'd waited to start the broccoli until the potatoes were done, we wouldn't be in this fix."

And when her older brother (who quickly regresses to age 10 and called her a 'weenie' and a 'big mouth' at this point) says that Ben Franklin discovered electricity, Francie says, "Well, Marty he discovered it was THERE, but he didn't really discover it. Not anymore than Columbus discovered America. Now, he did discover things it could be used for, and where it came from...."

When she's angry, she walks out into the garage, lets out one blood-curdling scream, and comes back in, composed. We're usually kind of embarrassed, because she wouldn't have done this if we hadn't all been bickering and trying to talk at the same time.

Francie was born, not first to me, but to a wonderful young woman named Luz, who lives in a place in Texas, a border town that is .. not so good. I'm proud of Luz; she's achieved much more in her life than many young single moms. But there has been chaos along the way; and I'm glad Francie was spared that part, as is her birthmom. Luz and i are close, and when I talk to her about the way Francie is, how fluently she reads, how brave she is when it come to any kind of injustice, Luz says she gets that part from me.

But not all from me.

From her brothers, she got permission to be a tomboy and stay a tomboy when all the other girls were turning to miniature kitties and mini skirts. When she dresses up, it has to be in a long black skirt with a little slit up the side and a velvet jacket, because she knows that cute doesn't work with her, but regal does. And when she explains things, it's not the easy way. It's in the way of someone who's not parroting information she heard from someone else, but something she's thought about. She also has a fat chuckle and a fine sense of absurdity, spending the whole day of her brother's baptism answering the door in a red clown wig and a vampire cape.

And when she was only about seven, and another of her brothers said that if a certain thing happened he would quit a job -- it did and he did -- Francie said, "You shouldn't, because then they'll blame you and it'll never change."

Which is why my husband, the other night when we were driving home said, apropos nothing, "I love all our kids."

And I asked, "Is there a 'but' in that?"

He admitted, yes, there was.

He said, "It's just that if you were going to start the human race over, you'd have to use Francie as the prototype."

He was right.

She's half-Mexican -- and demographers say that the decades to come will only make the world more beige -- and she was, for quite a while, the child of a single mom. I adopted France a year after I was widowed, to the horror of my family (who later thought this was the best decision anyone ever made).

She also has good stats. She's very smart, and in math and social studies especially. And she comes from a huge family -- an Italian/Danish/Indian/Irish/Lebanese/German family. She could celebrate St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo. Kind of the poor woman's Kennedy clan.

She would never get mad and quit and let the bad guys win. She's the most tenacious person I've ever met (sometimes to my own woe, when it's 9 p.m. and she's reminding me that we never made the homemade applesauce the way I promised). She would be send in the Marines if she had to, but she would be crafty enough to wait until there was no other choice, and bold enough to rattle every sabre in the closet first. And when the enemy backed off, she would have sense enough to know that a former enemy can be a proud friend.

She's got it all. And yes, of course I feel that way because I'm her mother. But you only have to look at her picture on this website to see that I'm righteous here.

Now, I have to live at least thirty-five more years so he can trot me out in my demure cream-colored suit for her Inauguration. She'll get choked up during her speech (she's absurdly sentimental) but she'll gather herself and proceed.

And what a relief it will finally be, to know that we've gotten over it all -- the gender stuff, the racial stuff, the background stuff. For the first time, we can say, "Madame President" and no one will have to worry that she's too rich or too poor, too ambitious or too dumb, or that she owes too many favors.

I've seen Francie bite her lip so hard she left marks wanting to do what friends wanted in order to be popular, but have to stop herself because it was wrong. She wants terribly to be liked, but she's never been for sale.

She has never spoken a racist word, or, so far as I know, had a racist thought -- although a few were directed at her when she was little, one by a local pediatrician who worried that she and other adopted kids might bring TB to our neighborhood.

In short, I wish I were more like Francie. Even her older brothers, all of whom she drives to distraction with her reminders, admire her. Her little sister could definitely be her social secretary. Her little brother, who already argues like a prosecutor, though he probably only knows 200 words, might be a good attorney general.

And this was predicted. When Francie was born, a friend of mine worked for then-President Bill Clinton. A few days later, Hilary Clinton sent Francie a onesie with a picture of the White House and 'Future President' across the belly.

I will visit her often, because I like big beds and room service.

Francie Nolan Brent for President, 2040.

As her slogan read when she ran (unsuccessfully) for third-grade president, "You Could Do a Lot Worse."

I didn't write this essay for 'It's a Girl!' but there are many more, and many that are wiser and funnier, in Andi Buchanan's wonderful book from Gray Seal Press. Obviously, anyone who's a mother to a girl deserves it for next Sunday. So, do that.

It's not often I try something so blatantly entrepreneurial on this site; but I'd like you to sign up for my email (or snail mail) list.

That way I can send you news (and maybe even freebies, if I create one, and I've an idea!) for each of my upcoming books. So often, I hear from readers, "If I wouldn't have stumbled across this book in a store, I'd never have known you'd written another one."

So I'd like to create a system: Will you help me? Get on the list so that I can send you a note, a card or some kind of freebie related to my novels. I promise no Spam -- even in a can.

Jackie

Recently, I realized I'd become a sort of perforce defender of Mormons. I wrote an Op-Ed piece about it, because in research and writing my new novel, 'Cage of Stars,' I met a great many Mormons (conservative and liberal, fun-loving and stuffy, strait-laced and free-spirited) but NO polygamists.

Polygamy is a big topic (and big business) right now because of accused pedophile and real-estate huckster Warren Jeffs, the most recent addition to the Ten Most Wanted list, and the hit HBO series 'Big Love,' in which Bill Paxton plays a Satl Lake City businessman with three families in three houses.

That's absurd; and it's unfair.

First of all, while people say that some Mormons "cling" to the ancient pioneer practice of polygamy (and Mormons weren't the only ones to do it; remember the musical 'Paint Your Wagon,' famous for the song, 'They Call the Wind Mariah'?), they really do not. The splinter fundamentalists who do are excommunicated and have been since 1904.

But for some reason, perhaps because it is a new religion with beliefs that don't always mix with the Judeo-Christian mainstream in American, Mormons get a smack across the chops for things such as this, and caustic mockery for other customs of their religion (such as the prohibition against drinking, smoking and caffeine ... and this is bad, why?) If any other religious group or ethnic group were so openly derided, peoople of goodwill would object.

Mormons once did practice polygamy. They indeed wanted to "grow" their numbers, and are still famously fertile. When they practiced polygamy, they also were pioneers, making their way across the country from points east to Utah. Some men didn't survive. The widows they left couldn't, under law at the time, own their own property or inherit. The decision to have more more than one wife might have been aimed at practicality as much as the begetting of progeny.

Few, however, do, over the lambasting of Mormons. Most say that they're used to it; It comes with the territory. But when they're put down for beliefs they no longer even believe, it's dificult not to be offended -- even if you aren't a Mormon or a born-again Christian of any kind.

I'm not an apologist for Mormons. Not all of them like my novel, although some find it touching and tender.

I am an apologist for ANYONE who isn't getting a fair shake.

Jackie M.

You're starting to make me feel like a bad host!

All the OTHER authors have long lists of readers who sign their guestbooks and add their names tTHEIR email lists.

I'm trying to compile a list of people who want to get notifications about new books, contest rules and possible freebites (I've got a cool trinket in mind for the next novel) when the next book -- a tense tale of the trip of a lifetime turned into a flight for life -- is about about to debut.

Won't you please sign up? I know you visit (I see your footprints in the sand and the snow!) but you leave no trace.

I promise never to send you spam. I promise not to nag you if you don't buy my novel. I just want to know you're out there, reading, and I can't really if you don't sign the guest book.

A flight attendant on a business flight I once took to California warned us all to be careful about letting bottles and other unsecured items roll down the aisle. "These are new stockings," she said to us. "You really need to think of MY needs."

The whole plane cracked up.

I don't want you to think of MY needs, but please do sign the e-list and the guestbook. Tell me what you like and don't like about the site, and what you want added. Is it easy enough to buy books? Is the content entertaining and informative? I worked hard on this school project, and I want to get a good grade.

And you're my only teachers.

Jackie

Say you have a friend who's just had a baby.

What's more natural than to buy that baby a teddy?

Or a giraffe? A lion? A mouse? A bunny? A tiger? A non-specific mammilian representative of some species rendered in huggable, hypo-allergenic cloth?

It's a wonderful idea. It's a beautiful and tender idea.

All your friends have had the same idea, as well as your relatives.

We have seven children; and each of the children does, indeed, have a special stuffed animal he or she adores. In fact, when Blueberry, a stuffed bear with a porcelain face -- beloved by our daughter Mia at age 7 just as at 3 -- met her doom at the hands of Mia's well-meaning little brother (who's sort of a living teddy bear, lumbering through life, with hands half the size of my own at age two), we went into panic mode. Most of Bluberry was still intact. Her face, however, had met its match on the washroom floor and was more or less gone, beyond repair.

The sorrow caused occasioned a late-night cross-country phone call.

Fortunately, Blueberry met her demise while I was in Las Vegas; and as fate would have it, that was whence she had come.

A 10 p.m. trip to the Bellagio Hotel turned up a smaller and floppier cousin. After a proper funeral for the deceased, "Strawberry" took the place of honor on Mia's pillow.

However. there are also adorable stuffed moose, in every guise including bunny ears and pumpkin costumes on Mia's bed. There's a whole zoo of carnival animals won by an over-zealous dad. On her sister's bed across the room, there are dogs, ducks and dragons.

And yet, when our youngest was born, we coudln't find enough undershirts.

The problem with plush is that once it's in a child's hands, it's impossible to dislodge. Pleas on behalf of children who have no stuffed animals are greeted with stony silence. The attempt to make it to the garage with an arc filled with lions and labrador retrievers is accompanied by wails of despair: Each of those creatures has suddenly become the cherished one.

Stores (no fools, they!) sell hammocks to install in the corners of the room, so that every single stuffed animal can go into that storage unit, where the group can happily commune and breed dust mites of every variety. The hammock is where stuffed deer or antelope stay: One who goes into the hammock never comes out again, except to be used as an auxiliary bowling pin in a pinch.

I'm not saying that some of those stuffed animals aren't beloved. When he got his own apartment, we were treated to the sight of our 200-pound son tossing the contents of the upstairs closet in search of his bear, Puffy -- and absolutely unrepentant about the fact that he was going nowhere without his one-eyed suede-nosed companion, who'd sat on his bed for nineteen years.

But not every animal can be a Puffy; and it's a torment to parents to have to gift a stuffed animal that's completely adorable to someone else -- partly out of longing for its sweetness, partly out of fear that the family member will visit and do a room-to-room inspection, expecting to find that particular stuffed animal in a place of honor.

If you read this, and you are a relative of mine, rest assured that the stuffed animal YOU gave to one of our children is indeed prized; it's the other 750 we don't know what to do with.

But next time a friend has a baby, remember this little blog; and write out a $10 check for the college fund.