We’ve flown in from Atlanta for a weekend in New York City for my 14-year-old son Addison’s first arena concert. Earlier in the day, on the way to our hotel in Hell’s Kitchen, the newly gentrified neighborhood where I met my husband, I wheel my Samsonite past a Port Authority far different from the predator-thick purgatory I remember from my days living in the city.

On our last night in town, we take in a production of “Spring Awakening,” where my son endures the excruciating reality of watching a musical about sexual coming-of-age, crammed shoulder to shoulder beside his mother.

The trip is a rite of passage, one more in a long line of them since that surreal moment a nurse laid Addison’s wailing 8-pound body on my chest. Like the first time he said “Mama.” Or the day I dropped him off at kindergarten and choked up at the sight of him, tiny and tow-headed in a miniature navy Polo shirt and pleated khaki shorts, looking like an investment banker on a golf vacation. His first full day away from me. The first of many.

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Plenty of free activities for kids are part of the Peachtree Corners Festival on Saturday and Sunday, including bubble fun, sand art and face painting. (Courtesy of Peachtree Corners Festival)

Credit: Photo courtesy of Peachtree Corners Festival

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