You used to find cookies in my purse, cheap, crumbly, little chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a paper napkin.  Always ready. I never was good at packing the hand gel cleanser or even Baby Wipes when the kids were babies.

But I was always good at having a little something sweet tucked in an inner pocket of my bag. I was always ready to plop a little sweet thing into one of my darlings’ gobs – if they got hungry, restless, noisy, whiney, needy. So imagine my surprise at the office yesterday when I reached into my purse to grab a tube of  lipstick, not to find a tasty cookie but to find a boy’s sport’s cup.

I remembered how it got there. Hayden was fingering it while we were waiting for dinner of burgers at the West Side Brewery on Monday night.

“Gimme that!” I snatched it out of his hands and shoved it into my purse.

This must be one of those undocumented Mother’s Rights of Passage, when the cookie is replaced with the kids’ sports paraphanelia. At least I could eat the cookies myself. At least the kids’ stuff in purse had a purpose for me too.

Now, it’s just a reminder that the kid has an 8 am game this weekend in Central Park. And that’s really not as sweet.