Every time I enter my mother’s house I’m struck by the keenest sense of vertigo. The place stays essentially the same—same blue-gray terrazzo floors, same brown leather furniture, same configuration of pastel-hued desert prints full of cacti on the walls—yet every year or so she’ll abruptly change some small thing, which leaves me feeling like I’m inside one of those Highlights magazine’s “Can you spot the differences?” pictures.
