I am sitting in a nail salon at a small, round table with a fan trained on my outspread fingernails, which are painted an appealing shade of pale aquamarine. There are three little piles of business cards in holders on the table, and because the staff seem intent on torturing me with this obscenely long drying ritual, I have plenty of time to scrutinize them. A bright green card with a picket fence border promises dog sitting (all ages of dogs!) in my home; I note the email is a Yahoo dot com address and ergo must be ancient. Another is from a contractor named Felix who says he’ll do carpentry and plumbing for way less than the other guys. The third is for the services of a registered dietician. The nail salon: Your one-stop dog-sitting, carpentry-getting, healthy eating habits shop.

A while earlier, when I chose my nail enamel, I aimed for the color of the sky but, unbelievably, could not find it among the dizzying pile of tile thingummies in the basket. (How is this possible.) Anyway, this is wholly unlike me, the entire scenario. First, I rarely get a professional manicure. Second, I don’t put any color on any of my body parts. Except today, I have been to have my teeth cleaned and on the way home made this bold decision to do both. David is home with the doggos and here I am, a free spirit loose in SoWo with a desire for painted nails.

The impossibly tall, thin (Vietnamese?) man who worked on me spoke little English and few words at all. The sum total: You have short nail! Yes, I volleyed back, I am on a keyboard all day. And a while later when he was massaging lotion into my forearms: You take off watch! Mkay, gladly, because this feels divine. What was his story, I wondered. None of my damn business, even if his observation about my fingernail length landed a bit judgy. He did fantastic work, which is all that matters, I suppose. I’ll come back to this dirt-cheap place, maybe. Only thing costly is the time, which I find every goddamn week seems somehow in shorter supply.

Like my kid’s visit last week, also too short. He pulled his fancy-ass car into our drive late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, tumbled out of it in his flip-flops and unbrushed hair, and consented to a hug and a kiss on his unshaven cheek. You can help me set out the luminaria when the sun goes down, I insist. It’ll be fun. And beautiful. He agrees to this plan without arguing.

Inside the house I have set the stage with all the sights, sounds, smells, feels of the season. I have labored nights after work and long weekends leading up to this moment, which I know will be fleeting.

A week before Thanksgiving the Christmas bug hit me hard after my head went back to forgotten corners it hasn’t visited in a long, long time. I am my father’s daughter after all, and prone to crippling bouts of nostalgia. This year she was my muse, until a few unfortunate days in my professional life upended the whole mood. Poof! Gone as quickly as it arrived. The first two weeks in December were finally more about labor than about truly enjoying the season, and that is just too bad. I find myself growing ever angrier for allowing this to happen to begin with, because I’m after all the captain of my ship. I invited some pirates aboard, and that is a shame.

Anyway, by the time my kid arrived, I’d pushed the pirates into the roiling depths and the ship smelled divine, like homemade mac and cheese (our first night’s supper) and fresh-baked cherry cobbler, the trailer park version, which he insists upon. And then on Christmas Day, the aromatic fragrance of mulled cider on the stove and bacon done in the oven and cheese grits (no eggs, thanks, he said). All good. I said I had some home movies of his first Christmases Chef David had digitized for me some time ago, that I wanted to show him, but he objected stridently, insisted he has zero interest in the past. I was taken aback, some, by just how earnestly and powerfully, bordering on rudely, he refused my offer to queue up these precious memories to share with him, so they stayed in the box.

We crammed a lot into our time together, much of it spent walking the beach, touring downtown, and venturing out elsewhere. I couldn’t help thinking about how this complex human behaved as a child when his dad and I took him to our vacation cabin in the Western North Carolina mountains for a long weekend, how out of sorts he was for all but the last half-day or so of our time there, when he’d finally settled into the new environment and changed routines, just in time to head home.

Classic ADHD. He always made a beeline right to his cozy cabin room with the rough-hewn bunks and the little dancing folk-art bears I diligently appliquéd around the ceiling, and instead of losing himself in the Hardy Boys books we left there as a special vacation-only treat, queued up a video game and ignored us, emerging only when he needed a snack or we insisted he come with us to eat supper in town. He was surly and out of sorts when he was entirely out of his element.

I kept waiting for him to outgrow it.

Now, as a thirty-something, he sports a slight surliness layered over a swagger that comes in part from his dad, I think, but also from insecurity and a touch of anxiety that loom just under the surface, always. He would deny this, all of it. Still, nothing is quite right. The diet here is too salty / greasy / fibrous / healthy / cheesy, take your pick. It’s too hot in the house. The air is too dry (we took care of that with the humidifier I thought of, but only on the last night). Slow down, mom—you walk too fast! Let me wash some of your clothes, I beseech. No. And then unceremoniously, the last night while we’re all bingeing a series he says he hates (but sure seems drawn to), he stands and hastily leaves the room, trudges up the steps, saying only, I’m bored. I’m going to bed, over his shoulder. A short time later I text him goodnight and he apologizes.

Right on cue, the next morning as I predicted, he bops downstairs and announces he must get back right away, there is business to take care of at home, and anyway he’d adjusted down the temp to 64° at his place, and with the blast of cold air predicted to roar through Western North Carolina soon, was justifiably worried about frozen pipes. Of course, I lied. I get it.

Here, finally, is the person I recognize at his best. Funny, lighthearted, happy, upbeat. On his way home. He reminds my sad sack that we did manage to cram a lot into three days, and I concede he is correct about that; I only wish he’d been more comfortable in his own skin. Honestly, three days is the perfect length for a family visit anyway, I reassure myself.

He packs the car in under fifteen minutes with my help, and as quickly as he arrived, is gone, reduced to particulate matter I wave away with my hand. An illusion. I watch him periodically on my phone until he pulls safely into his own driveway.

Later that night when I stoop down to flip off the Christmas tree lights, I glance out onto the screened porch halfway expecting to see his body sprawled on our bed swing in the darkness, that glorious, shiny mop of almost-black hair occluding half his face, the rest glowing in the light of his cell phone, a vape in his other hand. I notice my hair smells like him from the moment we embraced earlier in the driveway, and I don’t want to wash it away. Upstairs, his bedroom and bathroom are still a mess and I’ll leave them a few days because that is who I am.

He calls me when he is home and I tell him, Your mom has had a rough day today. He says only, I know, but I’ll see you again soon, and I believe him, even though I suspect it will be a while.

I realize I need to press reset on a lot of personal buttons, and the new year, after all, gives me an excuse for it. I’m aware of the matriarchal type who builds up holidays and with them expectations. I don’t want to evolve into that person, because she is burdensome. Maybe I need a therapist, who knows. People swear by them, but to me, that sounds like just one more thing to absorb into limited time. Anyway, I need to accept that the Christmas effort is one chiefly for myself, and a little maybe for The Chef. It’s irksome for the dogs, I think. But a piece of me hopes my kid got something important, meaningful out of all of it.

Did you have a good Christmas? I ask him. He nods, but what else would he do. Am I asking to satisfy myself, or of genuine concern for him? I think the answer must be, both.

Tomorrow is a new day, a new year, and time to refocus efforts and attention upon many files, jettison a few, arrange others in a logical hierarchy, create a few new ones. Near the front of the file cabinet, one labeled Realistic Expectations, and another one, simply, Kindness.

One could do worse.

The Rum Tum Tugger

T. S. Eliot

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he’d rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat then he’d rather chase a mouse.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat—
And there isn’t any call for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there’s no doing anything about it!

The Rum Tum Tugger is a terrible bore:
When you let him in, then he wants to be out;
He’s always on the wrong side of every door,
And as soon as he’s at home, then he’d like to get about.
He likes to lie in the bureau drawer,
But he makes such a fuss if he can’t get out.

Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat—
And there isn’t any use for you to doubt it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there’s no doing anything about it!

The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious beast:
His disobliging ways are a matter of habit.
If you offer him fish then he always wants a feast;
When there isn’t any fish then he won’t eat rabbit.
If you offer him cream then he sniffs and sneers,
For he only likes what he finds for himself;

So you’ll catch him in it right up to the ears,
If you put it away on the larder shelf.
The Rum Tum Tugger is artful and knowing,
The Rum Tum Tugger doesn’t care for a cuddle;
But he’ll leap on your lap in the middle of your sewing,
For there’s nothing he enjoys like a horrible muddle.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat—
And there isn’t any need for me to spout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there’s no doing anything about it!