For the first time in five years, I rang in the New Year without a child to put to bed before midnight, or to wake me before dawn. In fact, I spent the last several days of 2012 giddily cramming in consecutive nights of bad behavior, drinking shots of whiskey in dirty bars, dancing the night away in platform shoes, eating to excess in downtown restaurants, all rarities in my post-maternal life. My husband felt guilty he was so deeply enjoying our time away from our daughter. I didn’t. My remorselessness was underscored within an hour of our daughter returning home from her grandparents, when her first tantrum began, which she opted to stage naked, on the toilet. Perhaps she …
