”Mom, you look great. Really.” She keeps fidgeting with her hair and her skirt, looking at herself in the mirror in my car over and over as I navigate over the 31st Street Bridge to go to Nicole Brady’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Mom is almost sick with nerves.

I can see that my mom is anxious about talking with strangers. She’s anxious about her first holiday without her husband and how to be in public as Celeste Sheffield, rather than being out ...