Noodle. Darla ate dinner silently as Tom and Dylan talked enthusiastically about who they thought would be in the playoffs this year. She felt sad. When he was younger, she and her son had done everything together: making beds, making lunch, dusting the furniture, reading books, playing games. She’d been there for every moment of his life, had suffered through Teletubbies and Barney, had sung along with Sesame Street songs and laughed with him at the slapstick antics of his favorite character, Mr. Noodle, on Elmo’s World. Today, she’d discovered that he didn’t even remember Mr. Noodle. It had come up casually in a conversation, and when he’d stared at her blankly after she’d made the reference, Darla realized for the first time that all of those special moments they’d shared, all of those memories she thought they’d been building, were completely one-sided. She had memories. He didn’t. And she had never felt so depressed in her life. Still, she looked at him across the table and realized how lucky she was, how lucky she and Tom both were.
