I love you!" my daughter Phelan yells at the woman in the bath aisle at Target.

Phelan is four. She's in the cart and bundled in her down jacket and fuzzy scarf. It's February. Outside it's snowing and the snowflakes have melted into her hair. This makes her hair curl, and her blonde pigtails bounce like springs.

She dangles one fluffy arm over the side of the cart and waves like a beauty queen. "I love you!" she yells again, louder, and this time the woman looks up from the bath mats she's holding, two heavy slices of lime green shag, and seems confused.

I had come in with a list -- double-A batteries, socks, Star Wars boxer shorts for my son Locklin, Phelan's brother, who opted out of this trip so he could go on playing "Battalion Wars II" on his Wii.

"It's not real," Locklin tells me, because he knows I don't like war games. Sometimes, when he catches me watching the news, he'll put his 8-year-old hand on my back and tell me "Mom, lighten up. You worry too much." Maybe he's just repeating lines he's learned from TV. Maybe it's more. These days, there are so many things to worry about -- wars, recessions, the way my son with his serious green eyes is too much like me.

But the list. I had it in my pocket and had to keep reminding myself to check it. Target confuses me the way Vegas casinos confuse me. There's something about the lights. In Vegas, I go into casinos at night and when I come out it's morning. In Target, I go in with a list that says batteries, socks and boxers, and come out with a bookshelf, a lava lamp and 30 rolls of toilet paper.

Phelan gets distracted, too -- Target has toys and dollar bins and pop-up books. It has hot dogs and Slurpees. Her favorite aisle, though, is the greeting card section. She loves cards, especially the musical kind that play cheesy hits from the '70s and '80s. These are the kind of cards my daughter calls "invitations." She thinks they're magic.

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On this day there was a Valentine's Day display. There were the usual heart-shaped cards and cards featuring sad-eyed puppies and nuns. There were cards with cartoon cows on them and, for cynics, cards with pictures of dead and stomped-on roses. Phelan bounced and pointed and I forgot about my list and pulled up next to a row of cards that looked like half-eaten boxes of chocolates.

Phelan plucked a card and opened it.

"I love you!" it yelled. She laughed. She squealed. She closed the card. She opened it again. "I love you!" it yelled. She held the card up over her head and waved it. She brought it back down and kissed it. She closed the card. She opened it. She shook it like she was waiting for something, fairies maybe, to tumble out. She closed the card and opened it again and this time, she yelled back "I love you!"

And so it goes.

I put the card back on the shelf, but Phelan couldn't help herself.

"I love you," she yelled to the slit-mouthed security guard checking receipts, to the sad couple with their basket of air fresheners, to the flop-haired kid in Digital Cameras.

"Shh," I said at first, but then I gave up and let myself enjoy my daughter's rubber-ball voice bouncing off everything and everyone it touched.

"I love you," she yelled to the woman at the concession stand where the wrinkled hot dogs lolled around like sunbathers. "I love you," she yelled to the red-vested manager price-checking tennis shoes, and now, to this woman in the brown tweed coat, her arms laden down with bath mats.

Everyone else had been at a distance, but this woman is close. I'm afraid Phelan might reach out and try to touch her. The woman stares as we push past. She doesn't smile or laugh. She seems, maybe, horrified that I've let my daughter act out like this, and she may be right. Maybe I should have stopped it. I look past her and half-smile as if to say sorry.

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Back home, my son is blowing things up with his digital Terror Tanks. The game's sound-track plays Taps over a smoking battlefield. Here in a store called Target, my daughter's face is flushed with misplaced joy. I feel the pull of the world, what's right and good, what I can change and what I can't.

My son's right, I know. I need to lighten up.

But like my daughter and her joy, I can't help it.

I push Phelan faster and we turn into the next aisle. Plastic shower curtains covered with superheroes and angelfish. Toothbrush holders shaped like cities. And towels. So many towels. I reach into my pocket for my list. Batteries, socks. All around us, there's a rainbow of fluff and colors, the promise of what won't save us -- three shades of purple, bubblegum pinks, blues if you want.

I'm touching them, the blues, when I hear a voice from one aisle over. It's the woman with the bath mats. She doesn't quite yell, but she says it loud enough to feel it. "Love you, too."

Sometimes the world can change, just like that. And I know now, for these few seconds, under these bright and almost beautiful, believable lights, we'll all be fine.