On a single day last week, three people asked if I’d quit writing. The answer is no, I have just been working a lot. This is no standard dodge, for it is true. I have been working a lot. Malpractice insurers like lawyer-types to keep two calendars, so my assistant keeps my computer one while I keep a handwritten one, a red-covered, spiral bound “At-A-Glance” model. (While the word “malpractice” strikes fear in my professional heart, I wish there were some sort of malpractice insurance for my personal life, ready to step in and remedy the things that go wrong.) The computer calendar dispassionately displays notification after notification on my screen, while my handwritten calendar sits open demurely on my desk, a giant tangle of multi-colored inks. There are circled notations. There are a few things marked out with a giant X. Alarmingly, there is the occasional employment of a red Sharpie, a harbinger of calendar doom if ever there were one. I have taken calls, gone to court, and Zoomed to superstardom, to be sure, but mostly I have driven.

We replaced Lucky with a new-to-us car on May 5. My only wish was for another red car. But we compromised and purchased the car of Chris’ monochromatic and automotive dreams. Yes, it is grey, but it has abundant giddy-up, plentiful factory-installed options, and a pleasing rumble. To sweeten the deal, its prior owner engaged in a certain amount of customization: tinted windows, carbon fiber muffler tips, a carbon fiber spoiler, a blacked-out grill, and ground effects. This owner was apparently both an enthusiast and a preservationist, so he kept the original equipment and placed it for us to find in a box the trunk of the car. The address label on that box bears the name “Scott.”

In his honor, we refer to the new car as ScottWheels.

Over the last 55 days, I have driven ScottWheels 3,448 miles. My buttocks have conformed to the shape of its bucket seat. My hands resemble claws that have been prized from its steering wheel. When I’m not in the car, my middle-aged self longs for a button close at hand that will automatically result in the appearance of 72 degree conditioned air. I have rambled, and ScottWheels has rumbled, to Charleston, Brunswick, Waycross, Swainsboro, Hinesville, Thomasville, Atlanta, and even Albany. The Albany trip — a five-day affair — filled me with dread, but I ended up really enjoying it. I grew up both there and around there, and despite the passage of several decades, remnants of my past still floated along Old Dawson Road and Slappey Boulevard. Perhaps you can’t go home again, but you can drive past the first place you had a Krystal.

One of ScottWheels’ many options is satellite radio. Chris — in a display of husbandly affection and an inability to resist a rock-bottom introductory rate — bought six months of Siruis XM for the low, low price of $1.99 per month. Chris is an “80s on 8” and “First Wave” kind of listener, while I tend to gravitate toward “70s on 7” and “Soul Town.” Despite its impressive music catalog, Sirius XM is still a radio station, so there is some repetition. (It’s nothing like the summer of 1983, when “There’s Always Something There to Remind Me” played twice an hour on Albany’s 97Rock.) But if you listen to the 70s on 7, you will listen to “You’re So Vain” at least a few times a week.

I know all the words to “You’re So Vain.” An assurance that I know all the words to a song prompts my family to roll their collective eyes, for when they hear me say that, they know that I actually mean that I know about 65% of the words. This time is different, because this time it is true.

Son of a gun.

Driving home from Albany, when I was eastbound on Georgia 257 through small counties in middle Georgia on a beautiful late spring day, “You’re So Vain” came on. Move over Carly Simon, for I nailed a perfect rendition. I never came in too early (a frequent foible of mine). I got all the words (even gavotte!). I sang exuberantly and on-pitch (and stayed out of Mick Jagger’s way). I managed all of this despite nearly choking up during “You threw away the things you loved/And one of them was me.” Rather than being dismayed by the line “I had some dreams/They were clouds in my coffee/Clouds in my coffee,” I pounded my palm on the steering wheel to punctuate it. After such a great triumph, there was only one natural thing to do: I called my sister.

I wish I could say I called my sister to catch up, and while we eventually did just that, I had more pressing matters to attend to — namely, demanding that she do some internet research about the song itself. It was not a wasted endeavor (especially since she did all the work).

Did you know that the three verses of the song were written about three different men? We all have types, yes, but if I were to consistently gravitate toward men who inspired a song called “You’re So Vain,” I would ask you all to step in. Who has time for someone wearing a hat that partially obscures his vision and an apricot scarf, all while watching himself in a mirror as he dances? (Now that I ask that question, I am forced to answer that it may have described me at a few parties.) As if three vain men were not enough, there are rumors of a fourth, secret verse.

Carly Simon has identified only one of the subjects: The second verse is about Warren Beatty. He once told an interviewer, “I think that song is about me,” which alone makes me a fan for life.

It is the Warren Beatty verse that contains the line that always gets me: You threw away the things you loved/And one of them was me. Why does it nearly make my cry every single time? Since all of these miles have given me plenty of time to think, I have mentally composed a response and many other stories. But I have written nothing, for I have struggled with this particular story.

I mentioned a few months ago that I love someone who has a mental illness. It is an increasingly worse variant of hoarding disease, a form of OCD and a disorder popularized on A&E’s “Hoarders” and various documentaries. Those shows put out for public consumption people who cannot throw away things. They live in houses that are jam-packed with junk, often lack working plumbing, and frequently have a feral animal running loose in the mess. You can tell on the TV screen that the house smells terrible. The hoarders explain on-screen why they need to keep (for instance) a Crock-Pot of rotten meat, hundreds of reusable shopping bags, or thousands of back issues of People magazine. These shows often interview family and friends, most of whom have simply walked away. In the days where hoarding was someone else’s problem, I would ask of the hoarder, “How do you live like that?,” and I would ask of the family and friends, “How can you walk away?”

Now that I find myself an off-screen player in a Hoarders episode, I tell myself that the question “How do you live like that?” is not the right one, for my loved one is ill. I have learned that stepping in goes nowhere. (I have been told it feels like a betrayal.) I have found that throwing away things causes a certain doubling-down on the other end. So frustrated, dismayed, and set adrift, I have walked away.

I am not proud of this. But I am not strong enough to step back in, at least not for now.

Here is where it stands: A person I love drowns in a sea of possessions. Here is the effect: If every single thing is important, then nothing really is.

A few weekends ago, I spent spent Friday with one of my dearest and oldest friends. We walked around Charleston. We talked non-stop. We saw art. We ate ice cream for lunch. On Saturday, I went to a friend’s surprise birthday party. (An unexpected perk of being a lawyer: Keeping it secret was a piece of cake for me.) Chris and I had dinner with friends that night. On Sunday — like most Sundays these days — I worked hard to get a little bored. I walked the dog. I read a book. I watched too much Great British Baking Show while I knitted an endless shawl. I tidied up. And in a fit to take care of my things, I dusted the houseplants:

Perhaps it was extreme and unnecessary, but it felt good. A guarantee that I will not lose control, that I will prioritize what’s important, that I will not make the people I love feel discarded. That is a lot to place on the fronds of a single dust-free fern, I get it, but when you don’t know what to do, you have to do something.

ALC