There is a brief but important window where my four-year-olds genuinely believe I have magic. And that I can transfer that magic into their blankies at night so they won’t have any nightmares.

About five years ago, I was reading Night by Elie Wiesel, and I encountered a written detail so horrible it gave me nightmares. It wasn’t a major plot point. It was just a detail. Maybe a paragraph in the whole novel. Something unspeakable that a German soldier did to a Jewish infant.

I mulled it over for weeks.