In a perfect world, children would not die. But alas, this is not a perfect world. And that is why we are mourning for Evan Kamida, who would have turned 8 tomorrow, but whose funeral is today.

When you lose your child … I don’t know how you keep breathing. How you don’t hate your own treacherous body for demanding food and water and sleep as if nothing has changed, as if the entire universe hasn’t somehow shifted to a cosmically wrong place. But this is exactly what I wish for my friend Vicki. To keep breathing. To put one foot in front of the other and get through this minute, and then the next one, and then the one after that. If not for herself, than for Evan, who loved swinging with his mom and playing bongo drums with his dad, who looked to his sister for love and protection.

Just breathe.

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This is why I get nothing done.

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It’s not often that a book punches me in the gut, but The Pact hit me hard in so many different ways that I’m still catching my breath. On the surface, The Pact is a legal drama with 17-year-old Chris at the center, the only survivor of a suicide pact with his best friend, Emily. But the surface story is thin, and only highlights the meatier questions below it. Is it possible to truly know your own child? What does it mean — really mean – to love someone truly, deeply? What kind of love believes doing the right thing transcends what is legal or even moral?

The Pact reminds me of the movie Leaving Las Vegas, the story of a despair-ridden man who moves to Las Vegas to drink himself to death, and the woman who loves him enough to help him do it. Like The Pact, it made me ask what “being supportive” really means. How far would you go to support someone you love? Would you help them die?

I had a little trouble with Chris’s mother, Gus, who seems blindly supportive of her son without even a whisper of doubt or guilt over his role in Emily’s death. And the end, while satisfying, feels hastily written. But these tiny flaws are easily outweighed by the rest of this lovely, lovely novel. I especially appreciated the complexity of the parents’ marriages, and how they were affected by the actions of their children. Picoult uses a sure hand in writing from different points of view, including fathers, mothers, children, and even peripheral characters like an attorney and a therapist. And the PS Edition is especially nice, with behind-the-scenes info about how the book came to be.

I’ve recommended The Pact to my closest friend, whose children are nearly inseparable from mine. I’m tempted to send it to my teenage niece N, who feels more alone than she should. I plan to tell my book club about it, and my legal-drama-loving dad. And you should read it, too. It’s a compelling story that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

First sentence: “There was nothing left to say.”

Loveliest sentence: “It was Thursday, a quiet day in the cemetery, so that the voice of the rabbi seemed to carry, floating up to the branches of the trees where the finches watched with their button black eyes, their beaks closing around the words as if prayers were as nourishing as thistle seed.”

Recommended By: No one gave me this book or asked me to review it. I bought it so long ago I’d forgotten about it. It just happened to be on top of the very large stack of books teetering next to my nightstand.

I’m at the mercy of the blogosphere. Tell me what to read and I’ll put it in the queue on the sidebar!

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The Little Guy has made me some lovely gifts in the past: a Lego necklace, lightning bolt earrings made of twisted paper clips, and several “Mommy” name tags to wear at restaurants. The very best gift, though, came last night: Pretty Smelling Lotion, mixed in a plastic cup and now fermenting on the bathroom shelf. I will be wearing it at a barbeque tonight, where I fully expect to attracts swarms of bees, mosquitoes, flies, and several inquiries about the transcendent perfume I’m wearing.

Here is the Little Guy’s recipe for Pretty Smelling Lotion:

Water
10 squirts of lavender soap
Strawberry toothpaste
1 squished up blueberry
1 squirt of hair conditioner
1 squirt of apricot shampoo

Mmmmm …. what’s that smell?

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Masochist, thy name is MomBrain. Here I am, 24 hours before a hard deadline that CANNOT MOVE, and am I writing? Heck no. I went to Ikea. Drank coffee. Emailed a friend. Fiddled with my sidebar. Debated brushing my teeth and drank more coffee instead. Weeded out all the dead pens and threw them away. Applied the latest miracle wrinkle cream around my eyes. And now I’m blogging.

To be fair to myself, I’ve done all the research. Taken copious notes. And written quite a bit. All that’s left is the last sprint to the finish, which is exactly the problem: the word FINISH. Because once I hit the send key, I can’t fool myself into thinking it’s just a draft, that I still have time to make it perfect. And that’s the other problem: the word PERFECT. I have to keep reminding myself that sometimes B+ is a really good grade. That what I call “imperfect” is what editors call “job security.” That it’s okay to be good enough.

Off to make more coffee and then — really — put this puppy to bed.

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