I wonder if this happens to men, too.

I wonder if they can report on stories without at some point filtering them through their perspective as parents.

I can’t help it.

When Patrick Kane said today that the worst part about his arrest a little more than a week ago, was his family seeing him in handcuffs, his voice caught in his throat. And my throat closed up.

Kane is the 20-year-old Blackhawks’ star accused, along with his cousin, of attacking a cab driver in Buffalo over what the driver initially claimed was a dispute over 20 cents in fare. We still haven’t heard Kane’s side of the story and he said Monday that he hopes we never will because that will mean charges were dropped.

Clearly, there is a big part of the story still missing because even alcohol does not explain why a multi-millionaire athlete whose behavior has never before been questioned, would suddenly beat someone up over 20 cents.  

But all I could think about as Kane answered his questions, was how his mother felt when reporters called her cell phone to ask about her son’s arrest, and her biggest problem before that was getting him to stop playing with his mouth guard.

I pictured the first time Kane faced his parents and told them his side of the story and no matter how innocent he thought he was, knowing how destroyed they were seeing their son in handcuffs.

When Kane looked into the cameras and spoke into the microphones and said, “My family didn’t raise me that way,” I had a feeling that’s what they told him.

I thought of Kane’s three younger sisters, who make scrapbooks and “Welcome Home” signs every time he comes back to Buffalo, who struck deals with him when they were little – “We’ll play hockey with you, if you play dolls with us” – and how they must have felt when they first heard the news about their big brother.

And I thought of his grandpa, who lives next door to his parents’ house and who played cards with his grandson and laughed and who told Patrick he “added a couple years to his life” just by what he accomplished.  

I wondered how many people in the Kane’s South Buffalo neighborhood conspicuously stopped talking when they saw Donna Kane in the produce section of the grocery store last week; and how many who thought nothing of coming to their house at all hours to ask for autographs and mementos of the local hero, now whispered and pointed at the house.

I thought about Kane working out at home last week because he didn’t want to go to the gym. And I wondered how you go from the top of the world to sitting up at night wondering how quickly your entire world can change.

I wondered how a parent deals with something like this and how you never stop worrying, even when they’re 20. Maybe especially when they’re 20.

And I wonder how I can ever report a story like this one and forget I’m one of them.  

Lately, parenthood has become a race. With one child going to high school in the fall and the other starting junior high, it’s like we’re trying to pack in all the fun before it’s too late and both kids are too embarrassed to associate with us any longer.

At least this is what we hear from all the cool, professional parents who have already experienced this. They tell us that eventually, like when they’re 30 or so, your kids come back around to liking you again. But soon, and thankfully my husband and I are not so feeble as to have forgotten going through this ourselves, they will be mortified to do any of the following:

Go to the movies with us within 30 miles of home.

Go bike riding with us within 60 miles of home.

Be seen in public with us.  Anywhere.

I suspect the bike riding is even in jeopardy based on the reaction we got from our sweet, little Alec when we recently asked if he and his sister wanted to go on a walk with us. The walk takes us on a four-mile course around our neighborhood and our sweet, little Alec informed us that parading together as a family in this manner would be of the same embarrassment level as wearing headgear to school (and I sincerely apologize if any of you or your children had to do this).

Other than that episode, however, this summer has been filled with more family fun than any family has the right to have. Take this weekend, for example.

We let Amanda decide what to do Saturday, because we can never agree on anything and, well, we were obviously delirious.

She chose a Sonic Drive-In in Algonquin, Ill., approximately 800 miles from our home, and we agreed with the stipulation that we would also go bike-riding on a trail near there (my idea) and hit golf balls somewhere afterward (Alec’s idea). My husband Rick did not get to choose. It just works better that way.

So, why, you ask, would a 14-year-old girl want to go to a drive-in? We’re still asking ourselves this question. Apparently, she had never seen a drive-in until eating at a Sonic while visiting her cousins in Arizona recently, and thought it was great. She also watches the Food Network a little too often.

Nevertheless, off we went, happy with our family fun time together until we were an hour into the trip, finally arrived in Algonquin and ran into its Founders Day celebration and Algonquin’s one traffic jam of the year.

It was about this time that it occurred to everyone in the car but Amanda that we had driven 800 miles to eat a hamburger in a suburb much like ours. Only in our suburb, we eat them at a table.

“You can’t be mad at me,” she informed us in a preemptive move from the backseat as the parade kicked into high gear about 72 cars in front of us.

“Sure we can,” Alec informed her matter-of-factly.

Finally, we arrived and it really was fun placing our order into the speaker, having our food roller-skated to our car and watching Rick spill each condiment in his lap.

As a side note, I should mention that my husband reacts to the smallest stain on his clothes the same way a normal person might react to having an entire chocolate milkshake dumped down his pants. Translated, he does not like it.

Not that this detracted from family fun time one bit. It was actually one of the highlights of the trip.

Watching Alec do the same thing and react the same way in the backseat was almost as fun.

While we digested, we drove around and angrily noted all the good stores and restaurants that Algonquin has which our suburb does not, not counting Sonic. After killing about seven minutes doing that, we drove to the bike trail and unloaded.

This was Alec’s favorite part of the day because in a discovery only a boy could enjoy, he noted that the outhouse had a bottomless toilet much like the movie, “Slumdog Millionaire.” My husband got a big kick out of this too. Amanda and I did not.

As far as I was concerned, the bike ride was great. I’m not sure if the rest of the family agreed and frankly, I don’t care. I have been dreaming of these family bike rides since before both children were born and I’d see families riding around with kids in little bike seats and those pull-able tent things and couldn’t wait to have kids so I could do that – so much so, Rick often reminds me, that when Amanda was still a baby (I remember her being about one, but Rick recalls her being closer to three weeks) I tried to tie her into a bike seat.

(For those of you considering having children, they have to be able to hold up their heads on their own to best appreciate a family bike ride.)

Anyway, I enjoyed the ride because both children could ride along supporting themselves under their own weight. Alec enjoyed the ride because we passed a small airport and he could watch the takeoffs and landings. Rick liked it because when the trail left us out into traffic, he noticed that we passed a restaurant where we once ate after one of those soccer games 800 miles away.  

And we think Amanda liked it because she remembered insect repellent unlike the last family fun day when she swelled up and spent the next three days groggy from Benedryl.

We never did hit golf balls, but we’re trying to train Alec for when he gets married and has no choice in what to do.

Thankfully, we all share a similar, warped sense of humor that allowed us to laugh for most of the day. And when we got home, Rick and Alec went to hit golf balls together and Amanda and I went to see a movie they both would have hated.

Family fun day was officially over.

Can’t wait until next weekend.

It’s just a bed.

A little twin bed with a tendency to creak too much for our daughter’s liking.  It’s also way too small, according to Amanda, who is prone to exaggeration and has been dying for a new one for the last few years.

I remember when we all used to be able to fit in that bed. The whole family would  climb in together – Amanda, Rick, me and even Alec, who usually ended up falling into the crack between bed and wall and had to be rescued.

Much thought was put into buying that bed. We went to several different stores, my thought that it had to fit into a little girl’s room but be grown-up enough that if she wanted to take it with her to her first apartment, it would still be OK. I actually thought that.

It’s oak, with a white wash so it sort of matches her dressers, which also seemed important then. And it has an arched headboard and footboard with simple vertical slates and a trundle bed underneath that is concealed by fake drawer fronts. That also seemed important, the sleepovers.

The dressers were already there, one with a dressing table on top, which we bought with a matching crib. Amanda was two and a half and fine with her crib. Never jumped out or even tried. But the new baby was due in a few months and as custom dictated, the transition to the big-girl bed had to be done before little brother arrived (so the older kid wouldn’t resent the baby for pushing her out of babyhood and one day rock him so hard while they were sitting right next to the new bed that he bucked his head back and needed stitches).

Oh wait, that happened anyway.

Amanda was excited when we bought the new bed. Knowing me and the fact that I was eight months pregnant, I’m pretty sure I cried or at least wanted to as Rick dismantled the crib and put this giant piece of adult furniture in my baby’s room. The new baby would get a more neutral hand-me-down dresser and crib from his cousins, so Amanda’s would be packed up and sold.

We bought bright yellow sheets to go with a multi-colored comforter, which also seemed a shock to the system after the pastels of babyhood. Rick took pictures of Amanda lying in the new bed in her purple zip-up footie jammies, arms behind her head on the new yellow pillow, knees propped up and looking like a teenager.

She was so proud.

But not that smart.

In the morning when she woke up, she forgot she was no longer restricted by a crib and like she had been doing, called for us.

“I’m up,” she yelled. “Daaaddy, can I get up?”

Of course, my husband being my husband, couldn’t resist.

“Nooo,” he called back, both of us terribly amused that she didn’t know she could get up on her own.

I believe in some states, this would qualify as child abuse.

Rick was usually the reader and would lie in the bed with Amanda for at least five to 10 minutes before I’d find both asleep. As she got older, that bed was where I’d get all the very important news of the day that she was too busy or too bothered to tell me in her upright hours and would now be too horrified to share in the same detail.

It was also the bed where all the sleepovers took place, the first of them and in truth, most of them, her brother Alec making the trip over from his room next door.

She turned 14 on Saturday, after what we all decided was at least 18-19 months of being 13. And in a weak moment, with no other birthday present to offer and a very good mattress salesman doing his thing, we broke down and bought a new, truly big-girl bed.

This one has no real character, just a queen-sized mattress, box spring, metal frame and a headboard they “threw in” for $89.  And I’ve scarcely seen Amanda more excited.

It arrives tomorrow morning. So tonight, Rick is dismantling her old one and getting it ready for a potential buyer. Last night he took a picture of it for Craig’s List and we both remembered the last one we took with the purple footie jammies.

Hopefully, anyone interested will not mind the little dent where Alec’s head banged into it. Or the glued-in knobs on the head and footboards, so Amanda would stop pulling them out.

Maybe they’ll have sibling sleepovers in it too, and hear the same giggles late into the night as we did.

I will try not to cry as he boxes it up, mostly because everyone in the house will make fun of me.

Or maybe I’ll just go somewhere they won’t hear me.