My mother came into town on Tuesday. If your mother has ever been to your house, you already have a good idea of what I was doing last weekend: I cleaned like a maniac. I concocted sudsy water and discarded an old growth forest’s worth of paper towels and organized closets that my mother would never open and accumulated a Goodwill pile the size of a bonfire. The cleaning frenzy amused me — the words “neat” and “tidy” would never spring to mind were you to enter my mother’s home — and in all honesty, there were times that I wondered why I was even doing it.

It is much simpler to clean for my mother-in-law’s arrival. I know exactly why I’m doing that: Even after 23 years, I want her to feel that her son has made a good match. The last time that she was supposed to come, I had just read that smart cleaners used their vacuum attachments to vacuum everything. So wishing, I suppose, to be one of those aforementioned smart cleaners, I used the upholstery brush and crevice attachment to vacuum lamp shades and bookshelves, baseboards and picture molding, paintings and the piano. I vacuumed so much that the dog eyed me warily and the children made themselves scarce. And I vacuumed so much that at 2:30 a.m. (roughly four hours after my mother-in-law canceled her trip) I awoke with an overuse injury: A searing ache spread from the tip of my right thumb to the tip of my right index finger, a little fleshy pocket of pain uniting the two. Apparently, one is not supposed to hold the vacuum hose in a death grip for a period of hours. How was I to know?

But my mother’s visit was different. She had not been to Savannah for almost a decade — a decade that has seen me change jobs, drapes, and dogs; a decade that has seen me change from a mother of elementary school children to a mother of high schoolers; a decade that has seen its highs and lows. Yes, of course, I have seen and spoken to my mother during this time, but there is something different about having her on my home turf. She moved several states away from my childhood home while I was in college, and when I visit her, I have to ask for directions to the market, harbor some doubt about how to unload her dishwasher, and see no familiar faces as I roam the town. But in Savannah, I am in my element.

I try to write once a week. I do not suffer from writer’s block — life is far too interesting — and over the course of seven days, a story forms in my head. I tell it to myself, and listen to how it sounds, and finally sit at a computer and read as it flows imperfectly from my fingers. If I do not write once a week, I get irritable. I cannot say something that I want to say. I cannot write the story that I need to tell. And now, It has been two weeks — two long weeks — since I last wrote, although I started mentally writing this story while I cleaned house last weekend. But I simply could not figure it out until now.

Why does one clean? Because something is a mess. I cleaned thoroughly and frantically and incessantly because something was a mess. And that something, dear reader, was my relationship with my mother.

When I was a child, I knew these things about my mother. She was loud. She was pretty. She never met a stranger. She liked to look good, to smell good, to be surrounded by beautiful things. She gave of herself. And she gave some more.  She read. She had a ton of friends. She entertained. She cried like a baby when Elvis died. And somewhere — about the age I was when she last came to my home — she became so unbelievably sad and broken-hearted that the only thing she thought to do was grab a shovel and dig the deepest pit of despair that she could manage. Through the years, she grabbed that shovel again and again, perhaps in an attempt to get out, only to find an even deeper pit.

It is hard to watch someone self-destruct. There were many times that I wanted to grab her around the shoulders, to yell, How can you be so careless with someone I love so much? Maybe I should have, but I did not. I withdrew instead, and visited rarely, and called only dutifully. And then I hit my own skid, where that whole shovel/pit of despair notion seemed especially promising, and after flirting with my own bout of self-destruction, I looked in the mirror and told myself no.

And then I picked up the phone and called my mother. I booked a plane ticket and rented a car just to hug her neck. I finally realized that only she knew where her problems lie, that only she could solve those problems, and that withdrawing from her and judging her only exacerbated whatever those problems were. A few months ago, I extended the olive branch of an invitation, a plane ticket for a Thanksgiving visit. Much to my surprise and delight, she accepted instantly. And I started to clean.

I took a break from the cleaning to attend my son’s dance performance at school, my mother’s visit only three days away. My son is in his own transition period now, one foot firmly out the door, antsy and ready for college, the beginning of the rest of his life. With all of this struggle in mind, I cried when I saw him perform. He was in his own element and radiantly happy. My heart burst with joy, and I realized one thing: How do you make your mother happy? You give her a happy child.

And that is what I tried to do. I wanted her to see me at my best, my home — and my soul — unburdened and light. I set up a bed with my softest sheets in a bright room just for her. My mother, often riddled with insomnia, slept like child. I would peek in through the door and hear her soft snore. Chris fed her well, and I took her places. I sat at the Thanksgiving table, and when it was my time to express gratitude, I cried again, grateful for the presence of my husband, my children, my mother as I gave thanks for what may have been the happiest year of my life. And on the night before she left, the two of us went to see a live music show, A Motown Christmas, in downtown Savannah. My mother’s mobility is very limited; she tires easily and requires a walker. This trip, no doubt, was physically a hardship for her, and getting into the theater was an ordeal. But as we sat there, singing songs that we sang together when I was a child, I saw her then as I used to see her. She had thrown aside the shovel and waited instead for the breeze and the movement of the earth to refill that pit and raise her to the surface. It was nice to have her back, enjoying an imperfect relationship with her imperfect child. The group started to sing the Jackson 5 — When I had you to myself/I didn’t want you around — and my mother elbowed me. Get up, dance! she said. You know you want to.

I did. I really wanted to dance. So I unfurled myself from my seat and stepped into the aisle behind my mother, dancing and singing, my mother laughing and smiling and clapping.

ALC

Thursday brought a rare delight: Chris and I had court together in Atlanta on Friday, so after a busy day at work, the two of us loaded into the car and left Savannah around 7 p.m. As I shut the car door, I amused myself with the notion that Chris and I were a modern-day version of Hart to Hart, an ABC television show that ran from 1979 to 1984 that my mother loved with the passion of one thousand suns. The Harts were wealthy socialites turned amateur sleuths, confronted with a body count almost everywhere they went. This bothered me — at some point, wouldn’t someone begin to suspect the Harts? And even if not, wouldn’t having murder victims all around you make you run, not walk, to extensive psychotherapy? — but these notions did not bother Aaron Spelling, or my mother, for a single moment. But more to my point on Thursday night, Mrs. Hart (an auburn-haired woman with green eyes) and Mr. Hart (a dark-haired man greying at the temples) enjoyed their work, and enjoyed working together, and their telegenic good looks and cheesy plot lines aside, it seemed to be a fair enough comparison.

I needed a distraction since we were, after all, traveling in south Georgia in late fall at night. If you grew up in the 912, you know exactly what I mean. If you did not, let me illuminate you: Deer. We have all had our close calls with large, apparently suicidal deer with a desire to meet their maker. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources helpfully puts out a rut map — a color-coded county by county map reflecting the height of activity during the deer breeding season — and since being an attorney and mother of two teenagers does not give me enough to worry about, I checked the map. This was a mistake. The map reminded me that the deer’s desire to breed made them more active, and thus more susceptible to being hit by motor vehicles, during this season. The first part of our trip on Interstate 16 would be a week or two past the height of the rut, and I hoped desperately that all deer would be in a post-coital stupor, gladly watching Hart to Hart reruns on fuzzy black and white TVs, napping and drinking cheap beer. But the second part of our trip would be at the height of the rut. So I remained vigilant, and a little too frequently, the shoulders of the road appeared to be a white-tail version of a red light district, the deer slender and doe-eyed and searching for action.

I tried to ratchet myself down from DEFCON I and enjoy the ride. I love the intimacy of a car’s cockpit in the dark, the dash providing most of the light, the hum from the road regular and soothing. It always evokes trips from my childhood in the 1970s, where my mother would unroll sleeping bags for my brother and me in the way back of the station wagon and she would drive all night to our grandparents. We would stop at a Waffle House, and my brother and I, with our swollen eyes and our bed heads, would stagger in to eat in our pajamas. And even though Chris put the kibosh on my wearing pajamas on this trip, and even though it was the peak of the rut, there is something about being in a dark car, at night, with someone you love, that makes everything in the world seem just right.

So we listened to podcasts and we talked as I scanned the road for lovelorn deer. As Chris described to me a situation that had the potential to irritate, to cause hard feelings with someone else, he told me that he had decided instead to embrace this philosophy: The more, the more.

That’s it? I said. The more, the more?

That’s it, he said. And shrugged.

Although I understood the concept intellectually, I did not fully feel it in my bones. (My brain, while decent enough, tends to bow to my gut on matters philosophical, and until I feel it, I don’t exactly get it.). But not wishing to appear to be a sluggard, I did what I normally do in these situations. I said, Ah, I see. Then I nodded sagely. And I changed the topic of conversation to something that I could yammer on confidently about, like bad American television.

We made it safely to Atlanta and slept and worked on our case and like a sudden thunderclap resolved it at 10:15 the next morning. I had pandered to Chris in the hotel selection — I had chosen one attached to Lenox Square Mall — and with a suddenly free day sprawling before us, we wandered around. Lenox Square is in a more affluent area of the city, an area that seems to attract tastefully understated women in costly and elegant earth tones. So I started out dressed quietly enough in dark jeans and black loafers and a grey leopard print sweater and a bright orange silk scarf around my neck and eight bracelets on my left arm and an orange purse tucked under my right arm.

And then I couldn’t help myself, for two items exerted a magnetic pull.

I saw the orange bowler on a hat kiosk and practically sprinted and by the time Chris walked up, the hat was on my head and the money was leaving my hand. I spied the enormous persimmon wrap, complete with an odd painting of a half dog, half monster named Buster, through the window of store, and as a saleswoman wrapped it around me, she said, This is not for everyone. Don’t I know it, I said. And after I paid for it, I left it on, too, and (finally) fully arrayed, I left the store happy, bracelets jangling and the orange exerting its cheery glow.

I am used to Savannah, a town of eccentrics and art students, and I thought nothing of what I had on until I walked into a terribly proper store and saw myself in a mirror. Surrounded by all of the tastefully dressed people, I suddenly looked like a toucan caught in a very expensive mudslide, and for a moment I began to have deep doubts about what I had done and how I had presented myself. But I steeled myself and gathered my resolve, telling myself that it was all over if I traveled down the road of self-doubt. I had no choice: I simply had to own it, this expression of who I was. So I nodded at my reflection in the mirror and said aloud, More is more.

Even though Chris had not been talking about fashion in the car, uttering those words made me feel exactly what he meant. Sometimes you just had to go for it, caution to the wind. More love, more love. More patience, more patience. More generosity, more generosity. More forgiveness, more forgiveness. More money, more money. More joy, more joy. There was more than enough to go around, and if you gave it out, you were bound to get it back. The trick was to plow forward confidently, certain of who you were and owning the situation, going all-in and never doubting (for instance) that the more happiness you gave out, the more happiness that you would receive.

I waded back into the sea of neutrals, Chris at my side, and we had a bite to eat. A small bird, captive in the atrium of the mall, circled about me, diving perilously close to my new hat and my shawl. Her wings generated a breeze on my right cheek. I clapped my hands in delight, and felt the sun on my face, and enjoyed the moment. We drove home without an unpleasant surprise from an amorous deer, and when I entered the house, I ignored the dirty dishes, the mess in the foyer, and whispered to myself, More love, more love. It worked. My children embraced me, and my dog danced at my feet, and I felt more love than I dreamed possible.

ALC

I love a morning that begins with the tentacles of the past creeping out to put themselves firmly around my waist. So began Wednesday morning, when a friend and former co-worker emailed me that someone had dumped a trove of old office photographs in the break room and that he had snagged a few of them for me. He ended the email with, If you want them, I’ve got them. Of course I wanted them. What kind of question was that? — clearly, a rhetorical one  — and a brisk five-minute walk later, I had the pictures in my hot little hands.

I am a very visual person, and I spend an inordinate amount of time photographing what I see. A snap here, a snap there, a snap everywhere — all going to the hodgepodge collection of buildings and people and clothing and birds and dogs and funny signs that occupies way too much space on my camera phone. (And yes, much to my daughter’s chagrin, I actually call it my camera phone. I am a dinosaur, and a dorky one at that.) There are a few big moments that I capture on my camera phone — birthday, holidays, vacations — but mostly the images capture small and pleasing moments of my everyday life.

The Wednesday morning email made me appreciate the new immediacy of photography, for when I held in my hands an actual photograph, I recalled what an endeavor it all used to be. Assuming that you actually remembered to bring a camera, you then had to grapple with dropping off the film and actually picking it up. These are, of course, not the world’s greatest struggles, but the end result was that photographs seemed to capture almost exclusively life’s big moments. And in light of the relative ease now, I had forgotten what a pleasure it could be to find a forgotten image of myself at a different time and a different station in my life, with a big moment captured to bring it all into focus.

Anyway, here is a snapshot that landed in my hands on Wednesday morning, a glimpse of me from January 2000, at the first day of my former job:

I had seen the image before, although it had been a long time. You would not guess that fact given how much I have studied it over the last few days. It has sat on my desk at work, and I have looked at the woman in it, sometimes puzzled but mostly amused. Oh, it is clearly me — I remember the moment, the haircut, the suit — but somehow it does not feel like me. Note the navy suit, the efficient hair, the pearls, the stockings. (The sensible black pumps lurk below.) Note, too, the firm handshake, the wide stance, the politic sincerity, the almost manic smile. It marked a time of my life when I strongly felt that I needed to look a certain way and act in a certain manner. I had an important job and beautiful children and knees that could be fairly described as left and right, rather than good and bad. I had drive, and I had ambition. I had insomnia. I had a (figurative) hamster wheel. I had a sinking feeling that my entire life was MacGyvered together by chewing gum and duct tape, caffeine and Tylenol.

And then I had a car wreck in August 2008. Months later, I had surgery because of the car wreck. One day during my recovery, my then 11 year-old son asked me, What’s wrong with you? Why are you so happy? And then I had what may have been one of the key moments of my life, for if your 11 year old son thinks that your being happy is a noteworthy freak event, a veritable mystery from above, you’d better pay attention. I did.

I tell you all of this now because I have spent the better part of the last six years trying to figure out what makes me happy. Unfortunately, the answer is never concrete, like making x dollars a year or taking a case to the Supreme Court or having the biggest, most expensive BMW that BMW makes. I will allow that owning a Chanel suit sometimes factors into the equation, but usually the answer is far simpler: Fun. Adventure. Order. A happy home. A loving family. A savings account. Freedom. Colorful clothes. Friends. These are the about same answers that I would have given when I was eight, and at some point, I decided to think of myself as an enfant terrible, an unruly child who does whatever she wants.

Before you alert the authorities, tempering an eight year-old’s desire to do whatever she wants with a 47 year-old’s twin desires to be in bed by 10:30 every night and to pay the mortgage every month is an excellent combination. So it filters out like this: I wear tennis shoes and funny clothes. I tell people point-blank when I don’t want to do something. I eat ice cream at least once a week. I have been known to put a maraschino cherry into my sparkling water. And this year, I threw myself a birthday party.

If you have not thrown yourself a birthday party lately, I highly recommend it. I drew my own invitations on pink paper — OUR LITTLE GIRL IS TURNING 47! — and since my birthday fell on a school night, I invited mostly my neighbors and a few close friends for good measure. I have lived on the same block for 22 years, and by the standards of my Entelman Park brethren, that is practically no time at all. Some of my neighbors still think of me as a kid, and that is fine with me: It is good to have people in your life who reinforce your own notions that age is fluid. And while I have hit the neighbor jackpot, I fear that they may not feel so lucky with me, especially during the time of my current enfant terrible campaign. For if you are one of my female neighbors — let us suppose that you are weeding in your front yard — I feel that it is incumbent upon me to hoot and holler, wolf whistle and honk, and yell hooo–eeee mama! as I drive by. A convertible is an excellent car for this pursuit. And I will allow that the same neighbors who shake their heads now do so while shaking their hips, a little wiggle and a little laugh and a wagging finger as I act like an utter idiot.

And on a rainy night in July, they came out in full force to eat barbecue and birthday cake and pickles and potato chips, drink bourbon punch, and pose for some of those photographs of a big moment. I specified no gifts and asked instead for outrageous flattery, which (let’s face it) is a far bigger gift. Who knew that my friends were such skillful liars? And of all the outrageous flattery of that night, this one stuck with me the most:

You are absolutely gorgeous. And that is the least interesting thing about you.

Who cares if it’s true: What a way to imagine yourself! What can be more liberating than shoving aside all of your outer insecurities to focus on what makes you interesting? So as I looked at the photograph from 2000 of 31 year-old me, a me who was trying desperately to look a certain way and act a certain way, a me who tried to present herself perfectly to the outside world, a me who tried so damn hard, a me who cared so little about being interesting, I wish I’d had the benefit of this bit of flattery, this illumination of what is really important.

And just as my friend told me, I am telling you, my friend who is so lovely and tries so hard and who may worry so much about how you come across:

You are absolutely gorgeous. And that is the least interesting thing about you.

What a way to imagine yourself.

ALC