My friend Katherine remembers taking her daughter, Anabel, camping in Lake Tahoe, California, years ago, when she was a few months old. She went with a girlfriend.

They got there late; it was already dark and they put up the tent in the black of night. It got bitter cold and Katherine was convinced that Anabel might be freezing to death, so she hovered over her, checking her fat little arms and legs. Katherine didn't sleep a wink.

Next morning, when the sun came up, there were signs posted everywhere about how the squirrels were carrying bubonic plague. They went down to the beach and it was lovely and warm in the sun and Katherine felt so drowsy, but the squirrels kept coming out to sniff Anabel. Katherine had to stand guard, as Anabel was just a wriggling larva of a baby.

Katherine's e-mail is inspired by news of the gas crisis, but reaches me when the heat has just come back on. However, that same night, I check Rada's little fat hands, and they are hot. This is very unusual - Rada insists on never having her hands covered, and they are normally cold. I'm sure she's running a fever. Her nose is stuffy.

Her eyes tearing and gathering pus. She coughs. Still, judging it cruel to wake a sleeping baby to measure her temperature, I let her sleep and wait till morning.

The next day, my fear is confirmed. For 24 hours, a hot, drowsy, whimpering, staph-infected Rada clings to me. Any attempt to put her down is rewarded with the most sorrowful of cries. So here I am, at 2am, with Rada cuddled in her sling, drifting in and out of her fitful sleep. I'm tired beyond tired, my eyes now wide open, my back aching, the floorboards creaking, my flip-flops keeping time to my chaotic thoughts as I pace the room. My lullabies have lost their words and melodies, arriving at a monotonous, though soothing, sh-sh-sh-shhhhh. And I'm thinking about my mother.

She no longer waits for me, framed by the kitchen window, a nervous cigarette burning in her hands as I approach our apartment in the darkness of night, half an hour past my curfew, again. But I'm still dressed lighter than she'd like, my choices in life often riskier than she'd prefer. In the past, she often ended our petty fights over my perceived recklessness with "You'll see. You'll get to be a mother too." I rolled my eyes.

She was right. Becoming a mother has definitely helped me reassess my relationship with my parents. As I rock my baby through our first painfully sleepless night together, I try to imagine my mother going through hundreds of these throughout my childhood, and grow amenable to granting her the moral high ground bestowed upon her by the fact of motherhood. At 30, I'm not about to start wearing tights under my jeans, but I'm gonna stop the eye-rolling.

And as for Anabel, "Now she has sex and dances salsa and can keep herself warm quite easily," Katherine concludes in her e-mail. "What a relief!"