I eat breakfast most Friday mornings with my swim team. (I do not swim any longer, thanks to an auto accident that did truly dastardly things to my left shoulder, but once you see a bunch of adults in Speedos at 5:30 most mornings of the week, your adult swim team is your swim team for life, rearranged shoulder and all.) My son graduates from high school on Wednesday, and he has been on my mind. So as I ate bagels with my swim team a few days ago, I told them my favorite story from the day my son was born.

I come from the land of big people, and thanks to them I often forget that I am average-sized. But I am, and Chris is too. Our son was a big baby, sturdy and long, from hearty stock, and the pediatrician (whom we had not met before) walked in a few hours after he was born. As the doctor examined my son, he kept shooting glances at Chris. His eyes would dart from my son to my husband to me. Finally, the pediatrician said, “Is this the baby’s father? Because I expected a much larger man.” And I replied, “It is. And a question like that could really get a girl in trouble.”

Size differential and all, it was a ridiculous question, for my son looks exactly like Chris. They have the same royal family ears and the same mannerisms and the same gait. They often dress alike (unintentionally — or so they say) and they have the same decided bent to science and The Economist, order and literalism, indoor voices and Archer.

When he was born, I worked at a law firm where the majority of the attorneys were women — or, for those of you who love an acronym, a W.O.L.F. (a woman-owned law firm). One day, when I was large with child, one of the partners sat me down and said that while I could take my full maternity leave of six weeks, I would welcome coming back to work. While I am not sure that that was exactly true, I returned to work three weeks after he was born, and two weeks after his sister was born, and I have always referred to my time away as the “raised by wolves” maternity leave. I have given the children plenty of reasons for therapy, no doubt, and this may figure well among them.

At the time I took my maternity leave, I had an assistant who was nearly legendary for her typographical errors. I represented a judgment creditor one time, and my assistant handed me a letter to sign pledging that I would “chase the debtors’ asses!” to the fullest extent allowed by law. (To be fair, I had dictated “assets” — asseTs — although her version was equally, and maybe more, true.) I caught another letter before it went out, where I had dictated that I was looking forward to “serving as your counsel in this matter,” only to find that she had typed that I was looking forward to “servicing you in this matter,” which was not at all true. But my favorite was the batch of letters ready to go informing the world that I would be out of the office on “maturity leave.” (As it turns out, maturity leave was a much more appropriate name for what happened, for if anything will make you grow up fast, it is a baby.)

Short maternity leave and all, he made it, and he is a fine son. I have sensed lately the seismic shift from parenting to adulting, and since our day to day time is drawing nigh, I have been giving him a crash course on how to be an adult. It includes impromptu lectures in response to questions like, “How do you make our laundry smell like that?,” “Do you have any good books that I can read?,” and “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” (By the way, the answers are 1) Oxy-Clean, Downy, and line-dried sheets, 2) Ghettoside and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, and 3) You’ll figure it out.) It includes saying, “None taken,” about eleventy kabillion times a day in response to his saying, “I am so ready to leave home. No offense, mom.” It encompasses preaching saving for retirement now, embracing low impact exercise (those knees aren’t going to last forever, son!), and ignoring slights (except the ones delivered by your sister, since those simply can’t be ignored).

And today, I taught him how to throw a party.

Last week, he asked Chris and me if he could have a few friends over for dinner on Monday night — that is, tonight. I said, “Sure!,” and I thought that “a few friends” meant a dining room table full, you know, six or eight people. So as we ate breakfast together on Saturday, I mentioned that we needed to figure out what to serve, and almost as an afterthought, I asked him how many people were coming to his party. “Oh, 24 people have said yes. With plus ones, I expect 30 or 35,” he replied.

I was glad we had that conversation.

A few years ago, that conversation would have sent me into orbit. (I can almost hear myself speaking in all caps: WHAT DO YOU MEAN 30 OR 35? YOU SAID A FEW.) But current me — ALC 2.0 — was grateful for 57 hours of notice, and before I got much further down that road, he asked two important questions: “Mom, how do I throw a good party? How do I make sure people have fun?”

I nearly wept. I have forgotten linear algebra. I try to remove myself from politics. I never wear white shirts and khaki pants. Abstract art does not disturb me. These are the concerns of his father. But as an extrovert who loves parties, I have waited my entire life for this discussion. (And honestly, I felt if there were ever a discussion where I needed a beard, a flowing robe, a staff, a ray of sunlight illuminating my face, and a mountain-top perch, this was it.)

How do you throw a good party? How do you make sure people have fun? Oh, honey. You choose a simple menu. You have enough food so that there are a few leftovers (that way you know people had enough to eat). You put your guests in the loveliest place that you have in your home, with candles and flowers and tablecloths and a riot of color. You play music. You don’t mind the mess. But mostly — and this is very important — you (you yourself) have fun. Because if you are uptight and not relaxed, no one will have a good time, and especially not you. For this is a party, not an AP exam. And you, my dear, are the host. It is not I.

So three hours ago, he opened our yellow front door to his guests. He directed them out back, and if they remarked that they liked the garden, he said, “Thank you. It is a lot of work, but we love it.” He laughed, he hugged, he smiled. He got people Cokes, lemonade, water. His friends ate barbecue, fried chicken, potato chips, fresh fruit. While Chris and I walked the dog, they dug into chocolate cake and individual cups of ice cream. I have looked out the window at times, and I have seen many of them still sitting at the tables, the candles burning low. As I type now I hear their voices rising into the night, their laughter, their exclamations. I cannot hear what they say, but no doubt the chatter is about the new lives awaiting them, the heady rush of freedom only a few short weeks away, the chance to shrug off the shackles of childhood. No doubt that they fail to account for the missteps ahead, the mistakes, the regrets, the barrage of anxieties that adult life offers. But tonight — oh, tonight! — there is no time for that. My son is in charge, taking care of his friends, practicing at being an adult. He is good at it. He will get even better at it. At times he will feel even worse about it. But there he is, doing it.

ALC

There are some days that make it easy to complain, and yesterday was one of them. It was a Monday filled will small slights and minor irritations. I began my day by yelping and yowling in the hand surgeon’s office, occasioned by his saying, “Here! Let me pull out those stitches!” (As it turned out, those stitches didn’t exactly want to be pulled out. “Oh, you are rotten!” I wailed.) It continued with fuming about work, an irritating exchange with a client, an icemaker that produced no ice, a bad spot in Zumba class, an enormous dog dropping dirt and leaves in a sordid trail through the house.

And then I read Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement address at the University of California (Berkley). It talked about the lessons she learned from her 50 year-old husband’s sudden death from cardiac arrythmia. You can read an edited version of her remarks here, and if you have time to read only those remarks or this blog, please — skip this blog. The address put what passed for a rotten Monday in perspective.

Sandberg said that she records three moments of joy before she goes to bed at night, which allows her to go to sleep while thinking of something cheerful. I love this thought, for every day — even today, a very rainy, water-logged Tuesday that inherited Monday’s problems and added more just for fun — could use a few of those moments. Here are mine.

The cardinals.

If you look out the kitchen window on the left, here is what you see:

There is a purple bird feeder, and if you squint, you can make out the red tail of a male cardinal. In the Japanese maple to the right sits a brown female cardinal.

Cardinals tend to mate for life, and they are territorial. I have seen cardinal pairs in my yard for years, and I call them Doris and Ray, the names of my grandparents. Ray was short, always very tan, and never very slim, and he was typically attired in a red velour shirt, from which his belly would protrude. He looked like Winnie-the-Pooh. And he adored my grandmother, who was pale, slim, and tall.

Ray delighted in feeding cardinals. He kept a galvanized trash can full of sunflower seeds in his backyard (you can see mine just to the left of the brown urn). While I have resigned myself to the fact that the squirrels eat from the feeder, Ray never could. He had a pellet gun and a deadly Tennessee aim, and within the confines of a tidy yard in a subdivision, squirrels who dared to eat the birdseed met violent ends. It was rough justice, to be sure, but the man loved his birds.

Most mornings, I look out the window and see Doris and Ray. Among female cardinals, the most prized male cardinals are the ones that are bright red: It signifies access to a good food source. Among male cardinals, the most prized female cardinals have a dark mask: It signifies assertiveness and aggression. While cardinals pair off, casual watchers rarely see any sign of mating behavior. Yesterday, I looked out and saw bright-red Ray feed darkly-masked Doris a sunflower seed. It seemed like a gift, either from watching birds or from the souls of my grandparents.

The hat.

Every summer we go to the beach with Chris’ family, and every summer his mother dresses for the beach in an outfit that is reminiscent of a hazmat suit. It is as if she plans to single-handedly save a nuclear power plant from melting down after she finishes collecting shells. Rather than handling uranium rods, she has had skin cancer issues, which has made her (understandably) very diligent.

I worry about her son. Chris, who is on a first-name basis with our dermatologist, has had more biopsies than I care to remember. One dark growth on his chest turned out to be an age barnacle. I did not help that upon learning that term, I would point at his chest, right index finger crooked into a hook, and say, “Arggh, matey.” It was funny, perhaps, the first dozen times, and not at all funny the next ten dozen times.

Over the last few years, I have come to think of Chris as one of my very favorite flowers. I tend him lovingly, and I try to make sure that he thrives in his environment with plenty of sunshine, space, and care. (I try to avoid heaping too much fresh manure, for all good gardeners know that that can burn a plant.) Part of my tending has been trying to find the perfect sunscreen for his face, which has been surprisingly difficult. And then I hit on it: Chris needs a hat.

I hardly need an invitation for a hat. My mother has a picture of me that I wish I had. I am two or three, on a visit to the Louisville Zoo. I am wearing a romper with strawberries, white T-strap shoes, giant sunglasses with white frames — and an enormous straw sombrero. From that heady beginning, with a distinct if not tasteful sense of style, I have moved on to berets, ballcaps, fedoras, boaters, cloches, tams, sock caps, trilbies — you name it.

Other than the hat he wears for yard work, Chris has not been so inclined — until this weekend, when I wore him down. He now owns a straw fedora to wear downtown this summer, a simple hat that will protect that wonderfully familiar face. I felt like such a good gardener.

The paper.

I have lived on the same block in Savannah for 23 years, and for 23 years, I have subscribed to the newspaper. It has been part of my morning ritual, and on surlier mornings with sleepy children, a good horoscope for one (or preferably both) of them could turn the day’s tide. I have kept up with the small city in newsprint.

But lately the paper has broken my heart. Beginning in November, it began to show infrequently. At first, I got five or six days of a seven day subscription. Now, I get two or three days of a seven day subscription. This means that over half of my mornings begin with walking outside, looking for the paper, and realizing that it is not there. I have done this in the cold and in the rain, in pajamas and workout clothes, barefoot and in slippers. When it is not there, I shake my tiny fist of rage to the heavens above. And then I make a call to the Savannah Morning News. At first, I could record the paper’s absence by pushing buttons on a phone tree. Now, given the frequency of my calls, I have to speak to a customer service representative. Complaining is a lousy way to begin a morning, for it detracts mightily from the deliciousness of bacon.

So this morning, I broke up with the paper. I will miss things about it, to be sure, but on the whole, the relationship had to end. I have learned to live without it, and I look forward to living without all of the drama — the heartbreak, the lack of devotion, the waywardness, the unpredictability. It feels good to have let go. And to fill the void, I can move on to bigger and better things, like a subscription to People magazine.

ALC

P.S. — While I don’t have that sombrero picture, I do have this one. I dressed (and accessorized) myself.

My daughter’s birthday was last week, and on Friday, Chris drove her to Atlanta to a concert. I had gone with her to a concert in Raleigh, North Carolina, two birthdays ago, and it was an adventure. She is very small, and on the drive up, I warned her to stay out of the mosh pit or she could get hurt. As I gave her these warnings, I thought how very much indeed parenting surprised me. My mother had never given me advice about mosh pits, focusing instead on always — at every moment of every day — reminding me to apply lipstick. (I suppose it would have been fine with her if I got swept into a mosh pit as long as I was wearing appropriate lipstick.) But at that concert two years ago, parenting surprised me even more when my daughter started yelling at a young man “No, no, you can’t!” And as I stepped in to intervene, thinking that he was bothering her, he put his arms on my waist, whereupon it dawned on me: He intended to send me crowd-surfing. With every ounce of maternal authority I could muster, I said, “Young man, put me down now!” Even though he was not mine, he was helpless to disobey the mom voice.

I planned to go on that trip last week, but as it neared, I begged off, explaining that I really needed to do some cleaning. By “cleaning,” I really meant “work in the yard.” It was a fiction, and Chris knew it, especially when I let slip that I had ordered a truckload of mulch for Friday delivery. I unabashedly love mulch, to the point that when people ask if they can bring anything to a party, I respond, “A bag of mulch.” (And yes, good people, it works.) This was my first truckload of mulch, a dream of many years finally realized, a call finally prompted by the overwhelming envy I felt when a neighbor had two enormous piles of the stuff across the lane that we share. Why can this not be me? I asked. So I called and I gave a purveyor my credit card number and I waited. The delivery was set for any time after 11 a.m. on Friday, which felt like practically never, and when it finally arrived at 4:18 p.m., I was so excited that all I could do was clap and chant “mulchmulchmulchmulchmulch!” when the truck backed into my drive way.

In the five hours in the interim, I ate lunch with Chris and our daughter, bid them adieu, and tackled some other projects in the yard. I kept my phone nearby, awaiting the call of the landscape company’s driver, and instead found myself on the receiving end of text messages. They had been delayed just out of Savannah on the interstate by the aftermath of a wreck, a minivan that had flipped, crushed its roof, and flung its contents — clearly belonging to a family — all over the road. And later, on an interstate in Atlanta, the car in front of them ran over a gator — a semi’s tire had split and spewed — and kicked the gator into the hood of their car, where a piece of rubber did more damage than you might expect.

These were not exactly auspicious signs, and I was grateful for their eventual safe passage. I had a fleeting thought — today is my lucky day — followed by a lingering thought that is perhaps even truer — every day is my lucky day.

I will tell you now that the thrill of mulch ownership — copious amounts of very heavy mulch, to be exact — can be diminished somewhat by the realization that the gardener must spread it. If the gardener is, say, recovering from hand surgery and has really only one good hand to get into the mess, it becomes even harder. But never underestimate the capacity of a slightly diminished, very stubborn gardener on a perfect May weekend in Savannah, Georgia. Scoop by scoop, carefully loaded wheelbarrow load by carefully loaded wheelbarrow load, I spread mulch.

Yes, it is true that the actual call had been prompted by a flash of envy of my neighbor’s mulch. But compounding that was an invitation I read in a magazine. DO YOU HAVE A GARDEN EVERYONE LOVES? IF SO, ENTER OUR CONTEST! I should mention here that I first read this invitation while pleasantly oblivious on painkillers after my surgery, and it is seemed like a brilliant idea. Yes! screamed the Vicodin. Yes! YES! EVERYONE LOVES YOUR GARDEN! So in minimal pain, while very drowsy, I hatched a plot to make the garden perfect. It seemed foolproof.

And then I re-read the magazine during the five hours I waited for the mulch, and I saw where the contest required me to submit not only photographs, but a garden plan. I do not think that the magazine had in mind my actual garden plan, which is to cultivate as much lush abundance as cheaply as possible, relying heavily on  “nobody loves me” markdowns, plants abandoned at trash piles, and splits from friends, most of which have turned out to be invasive. (By the way, does anyone need some four o’clocks? How about some spider wort?) I have dug my own pond. I have painted my own garage. I have watered. I have weeded. I have grown bold. I contemplate the welding of fanciful monsters to lurk behind the azaleas.This is no plan. This is madness.

But if I actually had a garden plan, I would Include this. Every time I work in my yard, I think of two things. I think of a neighbor, a young woman who spent a few hours planting flowers in pots on the front porch. Four days later, the flowers were dead, and she gave me this explanation: “No one told me that I needed to water them.” I also think of my Grandma C, a woman whose veins coursed with Miracle Gro. In addition to growing a leftover Christmas poinsettia to the height of a small house, she said the nicest thing to me that anyone has ever said: “When I look into your face, I can see you as a child.” And she (the mother of five) gave me the best parenting advice I have ever received, bestowed upon me when I was pregnant with the daughter who is now 17: “If one child takes up all of your time, how much more of your time can another child take?” And it is true.

I suppose I should mention here that yesterday was Mother’s Day. Parenting has indeed surprised me, and as Grandma predicted, the children take up all of my time. They need me as much as they needed me when they were small, but it is different now: They need me for bigger things. They trade off in moods — one of them in a fine mood, one of them in a not-so-fine mood — and within the course of a few minutes, they can leave me frustrated and they can make me howl with laughter. They are adults without the benefit of years of experience, and they have transformed into their own people. My people.

So yesterday morning, they wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. I expected cash and prizes, fabulous and teary reminiscences, the entire queen-for-a-day treatment. At lunch, I forced the issue: I asked them whether the time had come for them to say a whole lot of very nice things about me. They looked pained. One of them finally said, “We thought that you knew exactly how we feel about you. Do you really need us to tell you?” They had a point, and once again I had no plan. “No,” I said. “Not at all.”

I took a lot of pictures of the garden this weekend, photographs designed to be submitted to magazines, images showing off everything in its best light. This is not one of those photographs, but one that captures this weekend for me:

This is Chris, cutting our daughter’s hair. Our son is off to the left, sitting in a chair and reading his book. Sheets are drying on the line, music is playing from the outdoor speakers, the smell of brownies — the ones that the children have made me — is wafting into the yard, and I have taken a break from all of my activity to apprise the moment. I have a family in a beautiful spot largely taking everything for granted. If they think of the hard work, of the spreading mulch with one hand, it is but a fleeting thought. They know only that this is supposed to be how it looks, and that it makes them happy and relaxed. It is peaceful, and it is cozy, and it is home. And they were right: They don’t need to tell me how they feel about me. Because I know.

ALC