On New Year’s Eve she would sit with her notes and a coffee cup of champagne, glancing at her watch and tapping a pencil against the legs of her chair. She would write something on an index card and, moments later, shake her head and erase it. The process was repeated until she wore a hole through the card and was forced to start fresh on another.

The next morning I would ask, “So, what was on your list, Mom?”

“Smother those homely teenagers who call themselves my children is at the top. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

I always got a great kick out of my mother, but my sisters, for one reason or another, failed to get the joke. They have grown to be humorless and clinically sensitive: the sorts of people who overuse the words “rage” and “empowerment” and constantly ask, “What do you really mean by that?” While I would often call and visit our mother, they kept their distance, limiting their postal or telephone contact to the holidays.