once thought I would need “help.”

I don’t mean the professional kind with a couch in an office. I mean the help as in Mary Poppins or Alice Nelson from “The Brady Bunch.”

In all of my dreams of motherhood, I assumed that with five perfect children who never fought and who obeyed my every word, I could do it all myself.

I would have the kids’ laundry perfectly cleaned and pressed. A five-course dinner would be whipped up every night, without so much a complaint from the kids about what I was serving…