The other day, my 13-year-old son found his dream shirt. It’s the shirt he’s been hunting for in every store for months, like Aladdin searching for the magic lamp.

There it was, at last. He ran up to me, brandishing the shirt, waving it over his head like a flag.

“This is it!” It was exactly as he had envisioned — the right style, the right color. He tried it on, and we both knew. It looked awfully nice on him.

I recognized the gleam in his eyes. It was the same look I’d worn in ninth grade when I spied the Adidas jacket of my dreams: striped on the sleeves, puffy, nylon, outrageously priced.

I knew, right then, that the jacket would change my life. I would walk into school on the first day of ninth grade in my name-brand navy coat, teal backpack slung over one shoulder, cheerleading skirt flouncing along, a different, whole, complete person.

I looked at my son, holding up the hopes of his world, his entire life spread before him on a golden path: this shirt would give him the perfect golf swing, the charisma of Phil Mickelson, the swagger of Tiger Woods. It would transform him, send him on his way through the PGA tour, maybe even give him straight A's in algebra.

There are some things you tell your kids, as a way of letting them down gently. Others, I find, are best learned through experience. Such as, the dreams we purchase can have a magic about them, but they don’t change us.

For instance, I live in the house of my dreams. Truly. It’s pink. It’s 100 years old. It creaks in all the right places. It has enough issues and projects to keep me busy for the next century of my life.

I walk around patching holes and painting old wood floors and battling wee critters, and I think, “I love my house. I love my house so much.”

And yet, I am still the same person. The same person I was when our family lived in a 900-square-foot condo with grimy pink tile and no yard. It is safe to say I am no more or less happy than I was then.

In truth, this has surprised me. I know in my heart that money doesn’t buy happiness, but I had in my mind that there would be a point of arrival, when I’d stand on the threshold of my life, throw my arms wide and say, “Here it is. The thing I was striving for.” The right house, the right configuration of children, the right level of health and fitness, the right creative projects.

This hasn’t happened at all. There is still so much to do. The pink house needs work. The children need work. I need a great deal of work: more, it seems, every year.

There is no point of arrival, only a continuation, a learning and relearning.

Except for last week, when I stood on the back porch and cut all four of my boys’ hair in the afternoon light. The wind was blowing, which made the whole thing a bit of a disaster, what with hair flying in our eyes and up our noses.

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But the sun was warm, and each of my boys talked about the things on their minds: upcoming AP tests, unfinished math assignments, new music, friends at school. I buzzed and snipped in a swirl of hair and light, and for just a moment I was there, right there at that threshold, saying, “This is it. This is good. Right here is so, so good.”

Back to the store. “So, can I buy it?” My son held up the shirt, the shirt that would change him forever. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he would be the same kid after this purchase. He would still need to work on his golf swing. And his algebra.

I wasn’t going to say any of it. Because maybe I was wrong. Maybe this shirt came with the added bonus of a swirl of light, caught just at the right time.

“Of course,” I said, pulling out my credit card. “It’s the one, isn’t it?”

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