My family had always judged people by what they could see.
The house.
The clothes.
The car.
The job title.
The people standing beside you.
In my mother Carolyn’s world, appearance wasn’t simply important.
Appearance was reality.
She was intelligent, energetic, and endlessly ambitious, but nearly everything in her life had been organized around how it looked to other people.
Our childhood home had always been cleaner for visitors than it was comfortable for us.
She chose cars for what they communicated.
She cultivated friendships based on usefulness.
And she
