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Four years ago today I put a babbling fourteen-month old baby and a semi-sick six-year old child into the car and drove (quickly, but by no means recklessly) to a city some two hours away for the purpose of picking up my infant son.

Except that then he wasn’t my son. “It’s only for a few weeks,” I told everyone, but despite the fact that a few weeks have stretched into four years (and more importantly that we are in possession of parental rights surrenders and a judge’s decree) I can hardly believe even now that he won’t someday have to leave.

Out of all the reproductive choices I made from the age of sixteen on, taking that child was the one that most shaped my family.

I wish I could say that I’ve responded to the chaos of the past four years in positive ways each and every time, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve failed. I’ve failed, I sometimes think, much more frequently than I’ve succeeded; I can only hope that the successes stand out in his mind more vividly than do the failures.

Last night a shadow appeared at my bedside a few minutes before 3am. “Mommy, can I get in bed with you?” the shadow asked, and for once I snapped wide enough awake to answer in something other than a grumbly mumble. I inquired with much more patience than one might think possible why it was that his own bed was not sufficient.

“A bug,” he told me, not waiting for any more of an invitation to climb under the comforter. “There’s a bug in my bed.”

In the middle of a frigid February I felt nearly certain that his bed was as bug-free as mine; nevertheless I scooted over and pulled the cover up to his solid little shoulders. “There’s no bugs here, baby,” I said, and as he wedged his body into the nook he’s been the right size for at every age from birth until now, I realized that he belongs here, not because of some heavenly pre-ordination but because we have made him fit, and that’s both far simpler and far more difficult than relying on guidance from God.

5-year-old, peering forlornly into McDonald’s bag: But mom! I wanted a Happy Meal!

Me, after having been up ’til 3am the night before and still feeling extraordinarily cranky: You’re right, it’s not a Happy Meal. But it is a meal and I expect you to be happy about it.

Early February brings tax season to the aag household. Under normal circumstances I would have had mine at least estimated by now but as I’ve been busier than (as my dad likes to say) a one-armed paper hanger, the forms got pushed farther back on the counter and lower in my overburdened thoughts.

At least they did until the ex brought up the topic. He was prompted by a desire to submit his own taxes, which he proudly told me would bring about the issuance of a quite pleasant refund. I’ll try to do them this weekend I promised, then scurried off to address other brightly burning fires. He questioned me again before he left for the night. “You’ll take care of your taxes this weekend, right?” I assured him that I would do everything in my power to pull off that miracle. “Good,” he said, “because I really want to see if you can afford to let me use one of the kids as an exemption on my taxes again this year.”

I think I’ll be able to, I told him, but I won’t know for sure until I see all the numbers in one place. With a final admonition to hurry up, please, he left. And by god I did do the taxes that weekend, keeping watch over a sick boy as he coughed and flailed upon the couch from 10pm until midnight, at which time I sent an email to the ex with details of the tax situation, phoned him to request his help in watching the other children, then took the boy to the emergency room; and I can assure you that the emergency room on a weekend at midnight is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.

We arrived home near three am, at which point I sent the child (much improved after medicine and a breathing treatment) to bed and thanked the ex most profusely for curtailing his alone-time activities to bail us out. I gave the time-honored hint of walking toward the door to hurry him on his way but he didn’t take the bait. “I read your email,” he told me, “and we really need to discuss this tax situation.”

Three am isn’t a good time, I pointed out. Can we talk later, when everyone has had some sleep? But he seemed unwilling. He planted himself at the kitchen counter and laid out an argument explaining why it was brutishly unfair of me to keep all the children as tax exemptions when he so abundantly deserved the extra money the exemption would bring into his life.

How much money that exemption would take from my life apparently did not cross his mind.

Later that weekend I sat down with pencil, paper and calculator. Ten minutes of math revealed that after child support, taxes, health insurance and other deductions, the ex brings home a sum of money that is approximately $400 less than my net monthly income. It’s $400 less, but it supports a single human being, where as my net monthly income feeds, clothes and shelters four.

I feel entirely justified in keeping the exemption, especially since the ex spent the next day dealing with the delivery of his 46″ television set. But perhaps I’m missing some crucial fact here that would reveal why I should allow him to claim one child on his taxes?

Maybe you could help me discover it?