A few weeks ago, I met Chris at the door with a hammer — it’s not as terrifying as it sounds, I promise you — and I asked him sweetly to nail down a loose threshold in the doorway between the foyer and kitchen. That threshold had been loose for a number of years, and every trip on that highly trodden path involved a three step process: 1) inadvertently kick threshold out of place, 2) stop and curse bitterly, and 3) readjust threshold before resuming travel. One day, after kicking and cursing and readjusting, it occurred to me: Chris could fix that threshold in a matter of minutes. He did, and foyer/kitchen travel now occurs without a hitch.

Emboldened by my success, I issued a decree: This would be the Year of Fixing Minor Irritations. It is not uncommon for me to declare “Years of _____,” and as my family will attest, it is not a silent process. Oh, no. It involves an announcement by me, right index finger pointed to the sky, with periodic reminders of the year’s theme as I am engaged in activities in furtherance of that goal. These sweeping pronouncements are probably better suited to press conferences and pep rallies, rather than the ravings of a pajama-clad lunatic holding a hammer.

But it has worked, and since the declaration, I have painted a peeling fence and weeded and cleared the unsightly patch of ground right next to where my car pulls in the driveway every single day. I have hired an electrician to re-wire the study so that crazy extension cords do not snake into surrounding rooms to supply power. A cabinet contractor is coming to the house tomorrow to design more storage space. I have replaced a magnet on a kitchen cabinet so that the door stays shut. I have replenished batteries in the doorbell so that it rings again. I have issued an ultimatum to the dryer: Either start working correctly or be replaced. And tired of putting on clothes with missing buttons, falling hems, and discreetly-placed safety pins, I have begun to mend weekly. (I feel like I should be watching a double feature of The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie as I mend, but mostly I watch Sports Center.)

If you have handled small problems as they arise, I salute you. (I mean that. Really!) I typically have not. I have been trying to change. My short experiment has generated a certain amount of shame since many of the minor irritations have been solved in a few moments, with only a few dollars’ expense. Would it have been so hard to ask Chris to nail down the threshold the first time I tripped? Well, apparently, yes. But mostly my short experiment has been liberating. I don’t pull into the drive at night surrounded by weeds, the peeling fence a distraction. It’s not necessarily that I notice that everything works; it’s more that I don’t notice, and feel overwhelmed by, the fact that things don’t work.

Mostly, I have been confronted by this fundamental truth: It is easier to be happy in a tidy home.

I was grateful for a tidy home yesterday evening. Yesterday was one of those deceptive days, with all of the good of the first half softening me and leaving me completely unprepared for the blows of the second half. Yesterday started promisingly. Waffles for breakfast! Engaging work! Lunch with dear friends! At its most amusing moment, in a grocery store no less, a gentleman in his late 70s ran his cart into mine and with a wink said, Beautiful, we have got to stop meeting like this. And from this very high altitude — let’s face it, it’s not often that a 47 year-old woman feels like a hot young thing — the death spiral began.

How I envy television lawyers, with their striking good looks, artful make-up, well-coiffed hair, expensive suits, Italian shoes, unbelievably perfect skin. (And that’s just the men.) And while being incredibly stylish, television lawyers solve problems in an hour (including commercials) by using a mix of determination and luck, moxie and pluck, good looks and cunning, all the while delivering courtroom performances that sound as if they were written by professional writers. No problem is intractable! No injustice remains uncorrected! Peace reigns in the valley.

This has not been my experience.

I have been an attorney for 23 years. I have been confronted by a fundamental truth: No one calls a lawyer because she is having a perfect day with everything going exactly right. This is not how it works. So from time to time, even on those rare days when I am artfully made-up with well-coiffed hair in an expensive suit and Italian shoes, it all hits. Unlike my TV counterparts, I cannot solve problems finally and perfectly in the period of an hour (including commercials). Sometimes people are angry and frustrated, in terrible situations, unable to gain control over their circumstances or their lives, mad at the system, unable to wait the passage of time, in need of a (figurative) punching bag. Yesterday afternoon was my turn to have EVERLAST stamped on my forehead.

So when I pulled into the driveway last night, tired and defeated, at least there were no weeds. As I walked into the kitchen, I did not curse the loose threshold. No cabinet was agape. Free of minor irritations, I noticed that my son was clawing into a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies. Bad day, son? I asked. Self-medicating? And he said, yes, and he was. I searched for comfort, too. I thought about having an oatmeal cream pie, but that seemed to be a dead end. What middle-aged woman eats snack cakes in rapid succession? (And to be fair, even Big Debbie would have been no match for me last night.) I thought about the bottle of expensive bourbon in the cabinet, the box of cheap wine on the counter. That seemed to be a much easier fix, but a far worse idea, than a fistful of oatmeal cream pies. So I walked the dog and asked Chris to make Brussels sprouts for dinner. I then called for reinforcements: I posted on my Facebook page that I was having a crummy day, and wrote like if you love me, people.

My friends are good people, handy with a like button or a message, a text or a phone call, a funny picture or a happy memory. I felt like a flagging runner suddenly buoyed by stronger arms around me, faster legs beside me. They helped me fix what I could not; this was no minor irritation. Sure, I will continue to fix what I can, this being the Year of Fixing Minor Irritations. The irritation of the fix is less than the irritation of the irritant, and like I said, it is easier to be happy in a tidy home. But on some occasions — and especially after spectacularly bad afternoons — a tidy home, increasingly free of minor irritants, may not be enough. One has to call in the big guns. Friends. Family. Brussels sprouts. A dog on a leash. Even ice cream and a hot tub.

Big guns deployed, belly full, body warm from a soak, I crawled into bed last night and slept the sleep of the dead. I woke this morning, shook it off, and faced the new day.

ALC

Like fine lines and crow’s feet, I have acquired yet another badge of middle age: I now have my very own gastroenterologist. One lucky member of my family previously required a pediatric gastroenterologist, who threw aside genteel terminology to speak in a language that his 8 year-old audience could understand. (This is a nice way of saying that he said “poop” a lot and that he had a command of scatological humor of Shakespearean proportions.) Sadly, my adult gastroenterologist does not operate in the same fashion, although he is not without a meager sense of humor: Posters throughout the office advised the reader that if she had a “friend” with hemorrhoids, this doctor could help.

But I do not have “friend” with hemorrhoids. Instead, I have some esophageal issues that manifest themselves infrequently but spectacularly. One moment I’ll be eating dinner, espousing what are undoubtedly bon mots, talking animatedly, and laughing, and the next, I’ll be pointing helplessly at my throat as the imperfect pump that is my esophagus starts backing up. When this happens, I can neither chew nor swallow; I can only wait until the drain clears, all the while making a series of helpless glottal stop sounds that alarm everyone. No kidding: My burbling sounds like a stopped-up sink. The gluk gluk gluk noises cause my family to drop their forks and stare while I go into full-on Yoda mode, calm and transcendent, centered and focused, until the moment passes. When in public, I eat in fear that this will happen and send a well-meaning stranger into DEF-CON 1, a quiet evening ruined by the Heimlich Maneuver and the specter of a crash cart.

Much to my family’s dismay and irritation, I have followed my standard course and ignored the whole situation. Once again, I have been an ostrich. Can you even imagine the size of an esophagus on an ostrich? But my primary care physician ruined it all last month, for she asked if I had been having trouble swallowing. When I allowed that I had, she inquired if I had unexplained chest pain. I told her I had been having that, too, although sometimes it seemed to be explained by stress and heartache, worry and disappointment, a figurative broken heart morphing into literal chest pains. Waxing poetically fell on the deaf ears of science, whereupon I learned one key fact of modern medicine: If you want to send a doctor into orbit, allow that the words “unexplained chest pain” have entered your life. I received no lecture. Her steely, narrowed eyes — and the refusal to allow me to make my own appointment — were enough.

All of this explains the course of the last two days. Yesterday, I sat in the gastroenterologist’s office, staring at hemorrhoid and digestive tract posters, Chris seated beside me. (Neither of us had planned for him to accompany me until I burst into tears in the closet that morning, when the weight of all the worry engendered by choking and chest pains hit me squarely.) We have been married for 23 years, and a long marriage carries a certain intimacy. But I will tell you this: There is no degree of intimacy that quite encompasses your partner sitting next to you in the gastroenterologist’s office as the physician’s assistant asks you very pointed, very detailed questions about your gastrointestinal tract. I used to think that I had no secrets from Chris. Now I know.

Everyone seemed to be relieved that I had no unexplained weight loss. (Me? I could do with five or ten pounds of unexplained weight loss, followed by decades of unexplained weight maintenance, the needle never budging despite heedless consumption of fried chicken and wine and chocolate cake.) But as I feared, there is a series of tests in my near future. At some point, there will be an esophageal scope and biopsy performed while I am sedated on Propofol. Isn’t that the drug that killed Michael Jackson? I asked. Yes, replied the physician’s assistant, but we will not leave your side. Can I at least dress like Michael Jackson for that appointment? You know, epaulets and sequins, a glove and dark glasses, white socks and loafers? If she had replied, Who’s Bad?, I would have embraced her and declared her my new best friend. Instead, she looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

Today brought the first round of testing, a modified barium swallow. I had dressed nicely for the appointment, and as I walked out of the house, I asked Chris if I looked okay. Honey, he said, it’s only a modified barium swallow. You clearly are dressed for a full barium swallow. I laughed, and he kissed me, and I felt that in this crazy life, someone understood me. Chris sent me on my way to the imaging center with exactly three things: a pack of saltine crackers, a can of diced pears, and a container of apple sauce. And as I sat in a hospital gown before an x-ray machine, instructed for the first time ever to slouch, I ate those items, now laced with barium, while a radiologist watched a real-time irradiated version of my swallowing. Barium tastes like a slightly raspberry-flavored chalk smoothie, and when smeared in paste form on a saltine, it brings to mind a single word: caulk. But yes, the test was as exciting and delicious as it sounds, and yes, even I will confess to immense relief when the procedure showed no mechanical problems, no tumors.

This immense relief sprung in part from a feeling of shame. I once saw a bumper sticker that said YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL A GERMAN BUT YOU CAN’T TELL HIM MUCH. I am not German, but I often feel like these words were meant for me, in all of my stubborn glory. In between the appointment and the procedure, I had spent a lovely afternoon with my daughter. She told me how happy and how relieved she was that I was getting all of this checked out. It had worried her. A lot.

I don’t write much about my daughter, probably because I don’t know how to. We are a lot alike, and our relationship is very organic. It is as if the obstetrician made an imperfect cut of the umbilical cord, and an ever-lengthening filament binds navel to navel, belly to belly, heartbeat to heartbeat. With testing looming, I had thought a lot about connections and promises, and about the connections and promises I had made to the larger world, even if that larger world encompassed only 3,200 square feet and a small garden in midtown Savannah. Within my little patch of this big old world, I had caused her pain.

No doubt that this will continue. I occasionally receive breezy after-the-fact calls from my own mother telling me about a recent hospital stay. Wait — Wait, I say. The hospital? But sometimes the knowing is scary. Sometimes the not knowing is scary. For everyone’s sake, I have decided to err on the side of the knowing. Step up. Be responsible. Quit scaring my family. If I am old enough to have my very own gastroenterologist, and confident to dress up like Michael Jackson under a Propofol-fueled procedure, clearly I am old enough and confident enough for this.

ALC

Eighteen years ago today, I stood in the front bedroom of my first home and listened to my neighbor yell at her children, then ages four and seven. My house was quiet, and the room I stood in — soon to be the nursery — was serene. There were children’s books neatly arrayed on a shelf, and a mobile waiting to be wound, and preppy plaid fabric, and columns of teddy bears standing at cuddly attention. It was a nursery decorated in a style that I called “Two Adults Live Here, Too!” And as I listened to my neighbor yell — frantically, increasingly loud, apparently obtaining no results — Chris patted my belly, and I said, rather smugly, That will never be us.

I was an idiot.

Our son was born the next day. I remember two things from labor: my endless gratitude for drugs and the look on Chris’ face. It was a look that I have never seen again. He was overwhelmed with love, fear, and a certainty that somewhere along the way, I had become a Navy SEAL. Then we heard our son cry for the first time, and then we started crying, and then the medical staff left us alone with an LPN who had seen on my chart that we were both attorneys — so she began asking us a number of legal questions as she washed the baby. And realizing that real life would intrude soon enough, I replied, Please. Please. Please just let me enjoy this moment.

I was wise in a way that I didn’t expect: The real world was rude. Very rude. Here I was, with a son, and two things were equally true. I was uniquely qualified to be his mother. At the same time, I was completely unqualified to be his mother. Regardless of the competing truths, I was his mother, and I had to figure it out. Quickly.

I became pregnant with our second child, a daughter, nine months later — what they tell you in high school health class is true, after all — and when she arrived home, my son resolved never to let down his guard ever again. At 18 months old, he stopped taking naps. (He still does not nap to this day.) He refused to sleep at night, and at some point, we made him a nest of pillows in front of the TV, leaving cartoons flickering without sound all night, in hopes that he would get a few hours of sleep. (After a few weeks, he began sleeping again.) About this time, Chris found me hiding in the garage, crying and wailing that I just couldn’t do this any more.

But I had to.

We sent him to nursery school. Do you know all of the cute hand print paintings that kids do? We found out later that the potholders, the turkeys, the placements in our home all carry hand prints of some other kid; our son did not like to get messy. He refused to wear long pants, and on 45 degree mornings, we would get lectured for sending him to school in shorts.

We sent him to elementary school. He started to plan the rest of his life. One night at dinner, he announced that when he grew up, he was going to go to Yale College and become a professor of history. He was 7 or 8 at the time. (His sister’s plans were different: She wanted to be a supermodel and marry a rich dude. I urged a business degree as a back-up.) On another night, he told us he wanted to move into our house with his wife, and to move Chris and me back to our old house, two doors down.

He went to middle school. He learned to play the violin. He went to high school. He learned to dance. He walked 87 1/2 miles on the Appalachian Trail with me. He has broken hearts. He has had his heart broken. He has realized that his whole life is opening before him. He has started to ask the hard questions, ones that don’t have answers like “wear the red one” or “spaghetti” or “11:30 p.m.”

Tomorrow he will be 18. Able to buy a lottery ticket, cigarettes, admission to a strip club. Able to be fully prosecuted, no exceptions. Required to register with selective service. Able to sign contracts, emancipate himself, vote.

He will be an adult.

As I write this, I find this all terribly hard to believe. I still remember the cowlick on his forehead when the LPN, having bathed him, handed him to me. His baby smell. His favorite book. His nightmares when he was young.

I remember all of this, but what I really appreciate as a mother over the years is what a pleasure it has been. My son — and my daughter, for that matter — will never tell you that I am their friend. I am clearly their mother, at times their greatest champion, at times their biggest killjoy. I love them deeply and constantly, but I am always surprised by how much I like them. I will give you an example.

This spring, nearing the one year anniversary of our AT hike, my son invited me to breakfast on a school day. Chick-Fil-A was unusually fast, leaving us with time on our hands. Who wants to be at school early? So we drove through the streets of Savannah, and I put him in charge of the music, and he picked a song that I knew. This was not a genteel pursuit; it was a song by the Beastie Boys, one that was popular when I was his age. There we were, 17 and 46, rapping together with the top down, stereo up, and when the song finished, I held my hand up and he slapped it.

I hate to describe anything involving the Beastie Boys as a moment of transcendent joy, yet I am forced into that description. It was a moment of transcendent joy. I cannot lie to you. The first years were rough; I constantly felt like I’d been shot down behind enemy lines, sleep-deprived and woolly, left to my own devices, and completely unawares. But in the car with him that morning, there was no place else I wanted to be, and the years of diapers and tantrums and sleeplessness and stress vanished completely in the four minutes and 18 seconds of the song. This was not what I thought I would get when I signed up to be a mother. It was so much better.

And here he is, on the brink of his adult life, on the day before his 18th birthday. Old enough to leave home. Compassionate enough to hug his mother every day. Kind enough to pose for this picture.

One of the most important men in my life. Happy birthday, son.

ALC

I volunteered to lead a book discussion for some college students at the University of Georgia on Sunday night, and while I was happy about the prospect and excited to do it, one thought plagued me: While I am smart enough these days, I am no longer college smart. Symbolism and imagery and the hidden meaning of names do not, like they used to, walk out of the shadows and shake my hand. Instead, I often feel like I am rummaging through a deep, dark closet, only to find mismatched shoes the first time around, forcing me to continue my search. This may be a function of how I read these days. Gone are the long stretches of time to loll on idyllic grounds, book in hand, backpack open. Gone is the ability to focus on one thing and one thing only. I am left with furtive efforts to read in between my other responsibilities, and I am left with sleepy evenings, exhausted by those other responsibilities, where I read and dream, wake up and read again, unsure if what I remember was part of the book or part of the dream.

To compensate for my lack of college smarts, I read the book — Sharp Teeth — twice. It is a book, written entirely in free verse, about packs of werewolves in L.A. It is a perfect book to read and dream, wake up and read again, because the whole book is like a strange dream. It follows the intersecting lines of a dogcatcher, a detective named (amusingly enough) Mr. Peabody, and three packs of werewolves — which transform between human and dogs that (to all but the most trained eyes) appear to be family pets. These werewolves do not need a full moon to transform; they require only something that provokes a deep, visceral response. Early on, one man named Bone morphs into a werewolf, courtesy of the smell of fried chicken, and within one brutal hour at an L.A. Popeye’s, everything is gone: chicken, customers, biscuits, gravy. It is violent and very funny, cold and romantic, fast-paced and elegiac. It also made me view Buddy in an entirely different way, occasionally looking at him and asking aloud, Exactly what is your endgame in my home?

Nobody that I know has ever heard of this book, and to be fair, the book found me. Although I understand intellectually the lure of the Kindle, it is not something that I have been able to embrace. I like to hold a book, feel its heft, smell its peculiar odor, look at the typeface. But with the growing extinction of bookstores, it is hard for a dinosaur to browse, to make a snap judgment of a book by its cover. I am cheap, too, which makes me chafe at full-priced book pricing. All of which is a nice way of saying: I spend a lot of time in thrift stores finding books.

If you are ever bored and want to spend a beautiful fall day with me, here is our plan. You will need no more than $50 and a baseball cap, and I will pick you up in the convertible, top down and playlist playing. We will drive south on I-95 until that one exit onto  US-17, where a few miles later in McIntosh County we will pass a herd of bison, a large and always delightful surprise. We will drive past the marshes, over the Darien bridge where you might see juvenile alligators, tails ringed with yellow, sunning on the side of the road, and then we will head to my favorite thrift store, one run by a church in Brunswick. Perhaps you will find there, as I have in the past, a daffodil yellow lamp or a cashmere sweater, hand-beaded with French steel-cut beads in Hong Kong in the 50s, but if not, you will enjoy the book selection. Hardbacks are $1.00; paperbacks are 50 cents; and given the apparently literary congregation, there is a good, culled selection. We will then drive over another bridge, eat barbecue in St. Simons, walk on the beach and watch the dogs play, and drive home. With all of the wind, it will be hard to carry on conversation, but we will both be so content from the day that riding in silence will not seem awkward at all.

And it was on one of these perfect days that I spotted Sharp Teeth in the thrift store. And then I couldn’t stop spotting it in other thrift stores, and by the time that my library branch had it on its book sale rack for $1.00, I felt like it was a sign: If the book continued to place itself in my path, apparently I needed to read it. So I did. Twice.

The book discussion went well — even with all of their college smarts, the students were very kind — and both before and after the discussion, I got to catch up with long-time friends. Chris was with me, and the next morning we planned to walk around campus and a nearby neighborhood to take the Chris and Amy Lee Memorial Tour. It is a chance to tell our story together, building by building, spot by spot: Here is where we met. Here is where we kissed. Here is where you broke my heart. Here is where you mended it.

Alas, poor Chris. He woke up sick from a recent flu shot, necessitating a cancellation of the Memorial Tour. So in downtown Athens, I was left to my own devices, my own wanderings, my own stories. Anyone who is a parent, or who is in a relationship, or who is employed, or who is human knows the pleasure of being utterly alone for a moment, behind dark glasses, deliciously unfocused and wonderfully disconnected. Oh, I enjoyed it. But no matter where I am, people stop to ask me directions, and yesterday was no exception. Where is the post office? Where is the bagel shop? I sent them on their ways, amused that I strike people (accurately) as a letter-writing carbohydrate lover. After a beautifully aimless hour, I returned to the hotel, loaded Chris into the car, and drove home with him going through cycles of dozing, snoring, and waking abruptly in the passenger seat.

I took my way home — Highway 15 — and I was rewarded. I waved at an old man sitting on a porch, next to his walker, whose activity for the afternoon was to watch cars. I saw cows, donkeys, horses, goats. I saw a black and white border collie mix on the back of a flat bed truck with “Cannonball” in crooked gold letters on the bumper. For several terrifying miles on a country road, I watched as Cannonball’s dog leaned over the unguarded sides to bark at cars, bite at the air, feel the wind in his fur. I thought about different paths, then and now, dogs and humans, and (thanks to Sharp Teeth) even humans who turn into dogs. When Michael Jackson came on the radio, Chris extended his left arm weakly to my face, offering up an imaginary microphone. And I began to sing.

ALC

For several months I have had what feels like a screwdriver lodged firmly near my spinal column between my shoulder blades. It is a nagging pain, and one that bothers me especially when I sit. I did what any sensible person would do: I ignored it. This strategy has not worked particularly well for me in the past, and it has even, at times, resulted in orthopedic accoutrements. Walking casts are the worst. Despite my getting to use my favorite injury-related joke — trouble is afoot! — millions of people insist on asking, What happened? After about half a million genuine, increasingly less cheerful, responses, I have found myself grumbling, I got this cast from kicking nosy strangers — and then moodily clomping off.

When the back pain began to worry my children — apparently there had been one too many evenings of conversations with me lying on the floor, looking up — even I had to acknowledge that it was time to see someone. So I did, and he ordered x-rays, and I knew that the appointment was not going to go well when he walked in, holding the x-rays, and asked, Exactly how long have you been playing football? I am a smallish 47 year-old woman, and if Nerf doesn’t count — and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t — then the answer is exactly never. I have exactly never played football, yet I apparently have the spinal degeneration of a long-time football player, with mild scoliosis thrown in for good measure.

Score one for the overachiever.

I will confess that when the doctor made the football crack, I imagined myself streaking down a field, Heisman Trophy-style, being chased by defenders and celebrating with my fabled two inch vertical leap in the end zone. I will also confess that during this reverie, I heard snippets like “decades in the making” and “long-term damage.”

I am not sitting here wondering exactly how this happened. Oh, I know. Cheerleading in the 80s — and its attendant old school saddle shoes. Years of running. My fair share of hard court tennis matches. High impact aerobics. Thousands of flip turns off the concrete wall of the pool. Heavy weightlifting. Questionable posture. And now, my soft tissue — or at least what’s left of it — has stepped in to be the speed regulator of the U-Haul that is my body.

Sigh.

I had been very mopey about the news, and this blog entry started out as a letter to my younger self, a weepy cautionary tale to save those knees, save that back, stand up straight. As I circled the drain, I called my mother, who said, Oh good. Maybe now you’ll stop all that exercising. These words snapped me to my senses, but probably not in the way my mother wanted.

Sports and fitness have been so important to me through the years. I have met some of my best friends that way, and I have had some of my best times. I have never regretted being part of a team, whether cheerleading, tennis, or swimming. I have figured out so many things in the solitude of a swim, a run, a hike. I have tested  my mettle in some of these endeavors, and I have occasionally surprised even myself. I have, at times, felt like a baller.

Thinking about my mother’s words made me realize one thing: I don’t regret the crime. I just wish I hadn’t gotten caught.

One of the nice things about getting older is the realization that regret — the coulda/woulda/shoulda — is such a sucker’s game. There is not a single thing I can do about the past. And as I write this — tall at my standing desk, in loafers, with kinesio tape on my back to reinforce good posture habits, having just received from Amazon a physical therapy-grade foam roller — I am walking, not running, into my future. A future full of Pilates and stretching, light weights and long walks. There are so many bad things in the world. This is not one of them.

If I could change one thing about the past, it would be the notion that all of this activity to would lead to physical perfection — that my legs would sprout inches, that my shoulders and hips would constrict, that my chest and abdomen would somehow flatten. If we are talking about a sucker’s game, then let us speak of trying to escape one’s genetic destiny, bone structure, basic physical form. I suppose, then, that this is another of the nice things about getting older: the upturning of palms, the nonchalant shrug, the letting go of unrealistic expectations in favor of a certain gratitude that you have many years left to be active, moving, alive.

I was thinking about all of this yesterday when I dropped off Chris at the courthouse. I have a little navy convertible — and a shameful love of singing along to pop music. When the top is down, there is nowhere to hide. I blame my Baptist roots for my impressively loud singing voice — Jesus can’t hear you if you keep your voice low — and as I turned a corner yesterday, the stereo blared my favorite verse of Miley Cyrus’ masterpiece, “Party in the USA!” A couple out running was standing there, waiting to cross, and the young woman burst out laughing. And there I was, a silly middle-aged woman singing loudly to a bad song, sunflower yellow scarf in my hair, handsome man at my side.

As the couple started to run again, she tapped the hood of the car lightly. Then she yelled, I love everything about you! So I pressed the fingers of both hands to my lips, blew her a kiss, and hollered, Oh, you are absolutely beautiful! Enjoy your run!

And she was absolutely beautiful: a 25 year-old woman in the prime of health, shiny hair, fit body, the long legs I always wanted. Out enjoying her run. I was so happy for her, the stranger, with the sun on her face and the years sprawling before her and a body that had not yet begun its decline. I sat up straighter, looking forward to the years sprawling before me, too, and drove off.

ALC

I am always the first person to rise in my house, and I have a comfortable routine. I open the shades, pet the dog, start breakfast, and retrieve the newspaper. As I eat my eggs and drink my iced tea, I read the front page and local news, and before I allow myself the pleasure of the sports section, I pause at the obituaries. It is less a morbid pursuit, more a nosy one as I try to figure out the world and the people who inhabit it.

While I understand a dignified announcement, with a bare minimum of facts (job, family, service information), I really appreciate families who give me a glimpse into their beloved. Sometimes the photo tells the story — a photograph of an elderly person in her youth, a long-ago wedding picture of a happy couple, half a snapshot blocked out — and sometimes the clothes do  — a Shriner’s fez, a snappy 70s leisure suit, or (my favorite) dress overalls. I adore nicknames, especially the bad ones.

I love an obituary that really tells me something about the person who is gone. A few years ago, the Savannah paper carried an obituary (accompanied by a picture of a man, circa 1975, with winged hair, a spread collar shirt, and a denim vest) that talked about the man’s love of loose women, fast cars, and Little Debbie cakes. I hope — and I mean this sincerely — that his heaven is populated by blondes, vintage Trans-Ams, Oatmeal Crème Pies, and a never-ending Burt Reynolds Film Festival. Recently, I read an obituary (accompanied by a picture of a smiling and pretty young girl) of an 80 year-old woman who survived her second husband, and having done so, found (as the obituary put it) love and companionship in her twilight years with the father of her children — her first husband, whom she had divorced. While the obituary said no more than this, I thought about how she might have hated him for decades, or had thoughts of good riddance to bad rubbish, or uttered words to the effect that she never wanted to see him again. Until one day, at a different station of her life, she ran into him and said, “Oh, it’s you.” I have read that humans typically have two or three significant emotional attachments over the course of their lives, and it both amused and gladdened me that two of hers were with the same person. Love reinvents itself.

The danger of reading obituaries (other than making up stories about the departed, as I just did) is that I occasionally read the obituary of someone I know or someone whose family I know. It is a very real danger in a small city. It is a danger that happened this Wednesday morning, and at 7:10 a.m., I found myself sending a text to a friend expressing my condolences about the death of her father-in-law. Since I never know what to say in the face of death, I said just that: I don’t know what to say, other than how sorry I am. And Pam simply responded, Come over at 8:00 a.m. to walk with me.

Her response was perfect. Pam is someone I have known since college, and then I did not know her very well. She moved to Savannah a decade ago, which is practically yesterday in Savannah terms, and lives five blocks away from me. Over the past few years, we have fallen into an easy friendship, one marked by a five or six mile walk every other week, where I talk and she listens, and she talks and I listen. On this walk, I learned that her father-in-law’s death was both expected and unexpected (neither of which would make the loss any easier); that 50 people were coming to her house for lunch on Friday after the noon service; and that while she had procured food, she had not found anyone who could serve it.

And I said, Please let me.

She insisted no, and that was probably smart given just how inept I am in the kitchen. My mother (named Martha, fittingly enough) can do anything in the kitchen. She loves to entertain generally and ply people with food specifically. Even to this day, when I come to visit, she insists on folding her cloth napkins into intricate shapes, like the Taj Mahal. (Well, not really the Taj Mahal, but you get the idea.) I got none of this — none of this! — in the genetic quick draw, although I seemed to walk out with a double dose of persistence. All of this to say: I may be as helpless as a kitten, but I am as stubborn as a mule, and at the end of the discussion, I insisted louder than Pam did. I won.

Today I borrowed Chris’ apron, went to her house, and worked until I got everything set out. It was not without a few tense moments. Yes, a florist delivered an arrangement, slid the rough-hewn container over my palm, and slit open the pad under my right thumb. (As I was trying to set down the mammoth arrangement while keeping pressure on the gash and not getting blood everywhere, he helpfully knocked at the door again: Be sure to pour some peroxide on that wound! It’s nasty!) And yes, when 50 people arrived at 1:10 p.m., the oven had not gotten the food hot enough. (I followed the directions to a T, but kitchen appliances, like copy machines and computer printers, can smell fear.)  Pam threw on an apron, jiggled a few knobs, and within 15 minutes, we were putting out the buffet.

I had never dreaded doing this — not at all — but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. For the next few hours, I replenished food and picked up plates and refilled drinks and heard everyone’s stories. I laughed more than I thought possible in the circumstances (and not just because everyone thought I was a caterer). I came face-to-face with the restorative powers of fried chicken and barbecue. I got hugged repeatedly, and mostly by strangers. I realized again the importance of family.

And I gained a new appreciation for the role of friends. Especially friends who let you help them. I never know what to say in the face of death — or for that matter, divorce, sickness, surgery, injury, heartbreak. But I always want to do something. It’s human nature. I thought today about the times that I have carried a particularly heavy bag of rocks, and about how I resisted offers of help from friends. I didn’t want to burden them, and I didn’t want to admit to any inability to handle the situation all by myself. This is silly. This is nonsense. This is not how friends act. We give. We take. We offer help. We accept help. We may not know what to say. Sometimes we just do.

ALC