I will probably not have one of those New York City deaths, the kind where you die but nobody notices until a funny smell begins radiating from your apartment. For one thing, I don’t live in New York City. For another, too many people rely on me for their every need for me to go a blessed minute unnoticed.

In case you’ve lost count (it’s OK), my children are preborn, 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Nobody—and I mean, nobody—can remember to feed the dog or brush their teeth without me. OK, well, I feel certain that they’d be capable of finding a sock, combing their hair, and calculating a math problem if I weren’t here, but I also know that they’d act like they couldn’t do it before they actually did it. The world will spin without me. I’ve already come to terms with this because I am 31, not 21.

Sometimes—just for the 30 minutes it’d take to soak in a bath undisturbed—I’d like to change my name. So when I hear footsteps on the stairs and the sweet call of, “Mom?” I could just as sweetly ignore it. Because it’s not my name. For the moment, I am Anne with an “e” and the owner of matching socks. My hair is not in a pink ponytail.

But I know my name and I know that there is no going back. There is no way for me to be other than what I am. I am a lot of things: crazy, tired, happy, and disoriented. But never alone. I prefer it that way.