On my way to work, I see what I think is the first sign of next week's Democratic National Convention. It is a mini bus, or some largish vehicle converted into what resembles a mini bus, painted red and seemingly defaced with ominous words. But this ugliness is obviously intentional, designed to grab the eye as it does both mine. I can read, "You've been warned …" on one side, the rest of the words hidden from my view by the hood of a Dodge Durango. "Murder: Plain and simple," pronounces a quartet of words slashed across the back in large and angry black paint. "It's a child," written in a smaller, slightly spidery, but somehow just as chilling writing style on the vehicle's back left corner. An American flag and a state of Colorado flag have somehow been affixed to the front of the scarlet vehicle and they sprout up proudly from either side of the hood, which, even as I watch, lumbers through the green light like a slow-moving, still glowing ember from hell.

I'm convinced this is among the first of protestors gathering for the convention until I see a white sign waving through the air from the street corner. Holding it is a young woman – high school-aged young I'd guess though God knows in the last couple of years everyone under 25 looks to me like a secondary school student – in a blousy white shirt, loose jeans, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, face devoid of makeup and expression. The sign is large – three feet tall by two feet wide, I'd guess, with a picture that occupies two-thirds of its available space. It is a fetus, small enough that it lacks the details that make the viewer think 'baby' but big enough that, even curled and with the otherworldly umbilical cord floating away from its middle off the edge of the poster, it looks undeniably human. The head is too big, the eyes too large, too black and covered by thin pink skin that makes the fetus look alien, but still, our images of aliens are also vaguely human. Its mittenlike excuses for hands apparently clasped in what looks like prayer. Under the photo, the words: "8 Weeks! I Am A Life!"

This girl/woman is not alone. On the opposite curb stand a gaggle of protesters, at least a dozen, most of them younger than she and holding identical signs.

At first, I am annoyed by the abortion protesters. One, because I am pro-choice and two, because I think these children are too young to have minds of their own and someday may cringe at the memory of their juvenile selves standing on the corner of a busy suburban artery, fighting for a cause they did not then understand.

But the abortion protestors remind me I'd forgotten tampons. This on the heaviest day of my period. And in turn, that reminds me I'd also forgotten to take my anti-depressant, mood stabilizer and assorted vitamins. I will have to turn back and go home, a pain in the butt but better than a stain on my office chair. And so perhaps the protesters do me more harm than good.

They remind me, too, of my son's comment last Sunday morning, as we pulled away from my Unitarian church. My son, as you may remember, was baptized some months ago into some radical Christian church that refuses to label itself -- though it closely resembles Southern Baptist. Unable to reverse his ill-fated dip in the church hot tub, I opted instead to become religious about my own faith and take him there as often as practical.

I was trying, you see, to be subtle about the whole thing, to let him see for himself the differences between the two, the tolerance and hope expressed by Unitarians as opposed to the messages of damnation and fear pounded into parishioners from the pulpit of his father's church.

I was trying, but not always succeeding. Sunday morning was a case in point.

"Why do I have to go?" he asked. "It's not like I'm a Unitarian."

"Yeah, well you might want to be one someday when you realize Unitarians don't damn people to an eternity of fiery hell for their sexual preferences," I said.

So I'm not perfect. Try, try, try again.

At any rate, after the service, we spoke for a moment with a fellow church member and married friend of mine who was four months pregnant, and none too enthused. This was a fact she did not make secret.

"Of course Robby doesn't want to babysit," she said Sunday. "He doesn't want to spend that much time with a baby. Heck, I don't want to spend that much time with a baby."

She laughed, but as with most jokes, there was a kernel of truth in what she's said. OK, half an unshucked ear of truth. Having known her for years, I knew she was one of those women who would become over-the-top indulgent, thunderously lovestruck and peacock proud once she held her child for the first time.

As we drove back toward home, I mentioned my friend's reluctance.

"Yeah," Robby said. "Why doesn't she just, you know what they do, kill it?"

I was stunned on a whole series of levels by what he'd said, perhaps even more so by how he'd said it, so casually, as if this were a simple, logical solution.

"Robby, I don't think that was ever an option for her," I said. "And she really doesn't mean what she says. She's being sarcastic, you know?"

He nodded.

I was still flabbergasted. "You understand, don't you Robby, that that's a horrible decision for a woman to have to make? It's not something any woman wants to do. And even if they do, I think it haunts most of them their entire lives. It's a terrible thing, do you understand that?"

He nodded again, but looked as though, in the way of 12-year-old boys, he had already tired of the subject.

This was one of those moments where I always feel a failure as a mother. A big subject comes up, is dropped in my lap in fact, and I sit there, slack-jawed in my lack of preparedness. Surely there was more I should say, more a good mother would say. Where was maternal instinct at a time like this?

Shouldn't I have said something about the fact that the term "killing" wasn't appropriate, that the debates surrounding whether a fetus was a life, whether it felt pain, and at what point cells become a person was never ending? I should have explained that the choice to abort is not typically based on a woman's mood, but economic, societal, mental and physical health and other weighty concerns. That as difficult as legal abortion may be, the options women sought without it were far worse. That a baby is a precious gift and needs to be born into a world, and a family, prepared to honor it.

On a comparatively lighter note, was this also the perfect opening to a second round of sex talks? Something over which we'd already glossed more than a year ago when he'd said, "Mom, I know about sex." For this moment, at least, I had been ready. In fact, I'd been ready for years, having purchased a copy of "It's Perfectly Normal" when I read portions of it that a friend had given her daughter. "It's Perfectly Normal" gave a straight-up accounting of all-things sexual, including masturbation, homosexuality, STDs, and birth control. The book was illustrated throughout with equally no-nonsense graphics, and peppered with light, witty comments from a pair of cartoon animals who appeared to "watch" the book unfold from some invisible perch. Robby disappeared with this book for a couple of days and confessed to me later he'd learned a great deal. "What about?" I asked. "Girls' body parts mostly," he said. And that was that.

But "It's Perfectly Normal" had not touched on the subject of abortion. Neither, apparently, had his father's church.

In the end, I said no more on the subject. But still I wonder, if I did the right thing. If I'm missing, somehow, that mother gene that seems to make most women emit exactly the right words in situations such as those. After all, like my church friend, I had never intended to have children, never expected even to marry. These things seemed unnatural to me; clearly, I'd been half right, but perhaps my instincts then had been spot on.

Maybe this missing gene is why, when Robby was a baby and most mothers were struggling with 10-pound diaper bags, I was floating by them with a tiny purse that held, in addition to my keys, lipstick and cash, a single diaper and a bottle. Maybe it's why I typically trudge ahead of him, too impatient to wait, convinced he's dawdling and not merely shorter-legged than I. Even to me, this doesn't seem natural; I feel vaguely ashamed when I catch myself doing it. Is this why I don't call him daily when he's at his father's, as most of my single mother friends do with their children? "You don't call him to ask how his day was?" more than one of them has asked in disbelief.

Or could it be that as a true joint custody parent, whose time is split with her child is split almost in precise half with another parent, I'm used to being on my own? That my life is almost unnaturally divided between mom time and me time?

These questions probably don't bear as much reflection as the subject or abortion, or even my son's casual perception of the idea. Because they are what they are.

My son's been raised in a way that is not traditional, and maybe that extends even to the way I address issues with him. So far, I think he's turning into a pretty cool little guy. Besides which, in these days of divorced, single, blended, and same-sex parent families, rare is the child who isn't experiencing a nontraditional upbringing. Perhaps the simplest truth is that any kind of upbringing, as long as it's accompanied with lots of love and healthy doses of logic, is absolutely, perfectly normal.