My mom visited for Thanksgiving. And although her intentions were good, she created muffled havoc (people are rarely rude back to one's mother) wherever she went, or whenever she opened her mouth -- or both. It's tough having a parent who is such a complex blend of amiability, joviality -- and bigotry. Add to this a towering dose of unchecked narcissism (with its volume level set at 10) and, well, one week can seem like a protracted stay at a POW camp.

We had fifteen people over to the new house for Thanksgiving. Figuring we'd sort of combine the holiday with a house warming. Bad. (Poor Charlotte.) And I doubt we'll do something like that again. Large groups take on a kind of collective uber life, swirling and moving through the house as one single entity without much 'Only connect'-ing going down. I seemed to have been shouting more than conversing -- and towards the end of the evening, despite the best of friends, great food and a 'magical' ambiance, I felt uninspiringly spent. Maybe I'm getting too old, or maybe the five days prior to the holiday, with my mom in full throttle, took it out of me. (Why do oldsters repeat stories over and over again -- and with a frequency guaranteed to ensure minute highlighting of details only an obsessive crime writer could be interested in?)

Alex and I both agreed to limit future parental visitations to short spurts -- stays requiring only carry-on bags, E tickets and one extra pair of shoes. After hearing once again (on the drive to the airport, to set my mom homeward) how the different women at her job are either 1) shacking up with men 2) cheats or 3) liars -- which means that, "in the eyes of the Lord," my mom's salty swearing, "is nothing in comparison," we put the whole jangled visit behind us and headed downtown to catch the new installations at SAM.

I've been a devotee of the work of Mark Tobey for years -- ever since my interest in abstract expressionism took root, back in the late 70s. But to see his work retrospectively, and displayed so thoughtfully, (juxtaposed with different paintings from Jackson Pollack, Morris Graves, Paul Klee and others) evoked a new appreciation for his vision -- and the sort of spirit that gave cohesion to what appears, on the surface, to be absolute randomness and scattershotness. I was humbled. To move from the Tobey exhibit, down two floors, to the electric world of Mexican Modernism (complete with walls of work by Frida Kahlo and Jose Clemente Orozco) was fantastic. I kept thinking of the gallery scene in Far From Heaven (which you really need to see, in case you haven't yet), where the beautiful Dennis Haysbert explains to the beautiful Julianne Moore how modern art might be exactly the same as religious art -- only with the literalness of the symbols removed -- leaving just the pure, transcendent feeling.

We took a fog-delayed ferry ride home, listening to an old mix tape that I found in the back of my glove compartment -- a weird amalgam of Lloyd Cole and the Replacements, Sam Phillips, Corey Hart (!), Bruce Springsteen, Crowded House, Toni Childs -- and I forget the rest. The cats were pleased to see us. The house was chilly. A fat cloud hovered above the deck. And it was so (so) quiet. My mom was safely home in Long Beach, god love her.

Ahhhhhhh.

Hope your holiday was peaceful.

PS: I'm on my annual December Maui retreat, and won't be back until mid-month. See you then.