You know how there are some foods that instantly remind you of a particular time in your life? Pink grapefruit when I was pregnant, for example.

I found another special taste again today, quite unexpectedly. I have a staff meeting tomorrow morning, during which we’re going to talk about scintillating topics like the upcoming year’s calendar and strategic plan. Worse, I am going to be doing lots of the talking. So I decided that I’d bring breakfast, just to make the morning a little happier.

We love stuff like donuts and scones in our office, but no one really needs them (least of all me), so I decided I’d make homemade granola bars, heavy on the fiber and fruit. A quick search found an uber-popular blog recipe that’s also super-easy. (A little more sugar than I’d planned, but hey. It’s for the hardworking women of the St. Mary’s Advancement Office!)

One bite, though, and I was rocketed back seven years, to a snowy week in Brooklyn, NY, where I went to help my sweet friend and new mom Rosemary take care of week-old baby Lucy. The first weeks of a baby’s life are nothing short of miraculous, but it’s tough on the mom, both physically and mentally, and I was so glad to be there. Every morning after Rosemary and Lucy were settled, I’d set out on a long walk, admiring the historic brownstones, gazing across to the gap in Lower Manhattan that I’ll never get over, and window shopping on some of the loveliest blocks in the world.

Eventually I’d make my way to an organic bakery on Smith Street, and buy one of their homemade granola bars, full of almonds and dried cherries and seeds and oats. At the end of the week, I took a stash of them home with me.

And tonight, I found them again, the taste of a very special week. Wonder if Lucy, now my adorable seven-year-old godchild, would like them?

Look closely at the shoes in this photo. Beat up, last legs, shot … they are trashed. Why? Because the kid wearing them has been waiting for — make that dying for — the sneakers he ordered at Christmas to show up. The sad tale:

All during the run-up to the holiday, all T. really wanted was the unconscionably expensive privilege of ordering custom-made Reebok Zigs online. Okay, we said, but that’s your biggest/best/only present. Okay, he said, I really, really want them.

On Christmas morning when he went to place his order, the site was down. The next day, still not available. And the next, and the next. Finally, we got an email with a promo code to use when we finally did place an order. SORRY was the promo code. (I should have known, and stopped the order right then.)

Finally, on December 30, he placed his order. And found out that SORRY only applied if you weren’t ordering custom shoes. Harumph, I said. They’ll be worth it, he said. Even though the company told him when he placed the order that the shoes wouldn’t ship until Feb. 6, and we’d made it clear that there would be no other new shoes before then. Okay, he said.

Well, it’s tough to keep a kid’s sneakers together, and today, four days after the promised ship date, I finally reached someone at Reebok customer service. It seems the custom shoes T. ordered had a defect, and were being made over. The new ship date: Feb. 19. Which would have been nice to know without having to call about it. No record of any order at all existed online at the link they had sent me.

“I’m so sorry,” said the nice woman on the line. “Has anyone offered you any compensation?” I didn’t tell her about SORRY; just said no. “Hold on,” she said. A few minutes later, she was back on the line: Apparently our order was still “in the window,” and there would be no compensation. By now I had begun vowing that I’d never buy another Reebok product, after I was going to have to tell my kid he’d now wait for nearly two months to get the one Christmas present he had been waiting for. “You could call back on Monday,” she ventured, “and ask to see the tracking,” which I guess is code for “that’s the first day we can give you any discount or coupon for botching up the already overpriced, long-delayed order with our company.”

Yes, I know it’s just a pair of athletic shoes. And maybe this is cosmic payback for letting him buy something I don’t really think is worth the price. But it was his Christmas present, darn it, and it makes me MAD that Reebok isn’t at least able to ease his long wait for gratification.

I sure hope those shoes are worth it, whenever they finally show up.

As many of my friends know by now, we have struggled this year with the fact that Tomas’s grades aren’t what they could be for reasons that seem really dumb to me: He often forgets to turn in his finished assignments, and loses points (and sometimes entire grades) because he doesn’t put his name on his paper, round to the correct decimal or otherwise follow the directions.

I have read all of those books about 11-year-old brain development, and I know boys are generally late to the organization party, but the fact that he continues to do this stuff makes me really mad. There, I said it. I know that being mad isn’t helpful for anyone, especially at 9 at night when homework needs to be finished and sixth graders need to be in bed. (I don’t really understand it, either — I never haven’t turned in my homework IN MY LIFE — but that’s beside the point for now.)

I also hate being angry with him: it hurts him, and makes me feel crummy, too. So I channeled one of my own sixth grade memories, and we have begun to read “The Hobbit” out loud every night before bedtime. (Yes, back at Orchard Park School in Kettering, Ohio, the estimable Mrs. Huffman read it to us for a half-hour every day after lunch.) I still remember the peaceful feeling of letting my imagination dream up the outlines of Middle Earth, and I thought it would be a good way for us to end our day. Boy, was I right — even when we only read for 10 minutes, the whole atmosphere changes, he holds my hand … it’s bliss.

But here’s the second — and much tougher — part of our new strategy. We’re going to try to totally take our hands off his homework and organization issues. The only requirement we’ll enforce: That he look every night at his grades online, so he gets immediate feedback from his day/week at school. We won’t ask him what’s due, what he’s done, etc., though he can ask us for help whenever he feels like he needs it.

To say he is thrilled with this new turn of events is an understatement. But as his dad said, he probably will want to be careful what he wishes for. Taking responsibility for your own work is way harder than I think he realizes. We’ll talk about the details of this strategy with his teachers next week, and the plan is for this to continue until spring break, or mid-March.

I think this will be REALLY tough, for all three of us. Way tougher than the Tiger Mother approach, which I also briefly considered.

Wish us all luck. Especially Tomas.

I should be used to it by now, but I can never get over how, the minute the turkey leftovers are put away, Southerners get out their Christmas stuff. Maybe it’s like this in Ohio now, too, but when I was growing up, no one put their tree up until at least the second week of December, then we kept it up until Epiphany, or when the magi finally reached the Christ child.

I need to stop complaining, though, because a short walk around my lovely neighborhood tonight was just what I needed for the post-holiday blues. It’s appropriately chilly, the big tree in Christmas Tree park is lit, and the halls up and down our block are decked.

Now for some holiday spirit of my own.

In the midst of an otherwise wonderful weekend full of old friends, good football, beautiful weather and good food and drink, my friend Peggy got word from her kennel in Illinois that her 9-year-old dog had had a sudden heart attack, and was dead. It was a horrible jolt for her, and cast a shadow over the end of our weekend, though she did a good job of pretending she wasn’t thinking about her empty house, and the memories and dog toys awaiting her at home.

Peggy is one of my oldest friends, and she’s never been the confessional type. Even in the midst of some deep sorrows we’ve shared over the years, talking about her feelings doesn’t comes easily. You have to listen carefully. And here is what I heard this weekend: Her dogs give her an identity, and are the companionship she counts on now that her boys are grown and out of the house, and her hard-working husband regularly comes home late. My heart won’t soon forget her teary first reaction to Roy’s death: “He was my best friend!”

It’s interesting to watch some of our friends, whose children are older, and who are clearly moving into the next stage of their lives. Should they try to sell their lovely big home (near the Lake Michigan dog beach) for something smaller? What kind of work is Peggy meant to do, now that she has a master’s and more free time than ever? How do we define ourselves once our children no longer determine the shape of the day?

Of course, I am a few years away from this transition, and have a different kind of life. But with Roy’s passing, and thinking of Peggy’s big empty house, it sure makes me wonder how I’ll navigate it once the time comes for me. Are you ever ready for that kind of journey?