Driving home, replaying the evening in my mind, I could barely believe such a night could be real. As I stepped out of the cab, I looked down at my feet and saw that both of my shoes had an ugly bit of glue exposed over the peep-toe. And then I realized I had my proof that the night had really happened:
I had danced the bows off my shoes.
“Oh, Kitten, that’s marvelous!” my grandmother cried. Her tone turned serious, “But did you sing at the piano bar?”
I laughed. “No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I’d be too embarrassed. I don’t think I even know all the words to any song.”
“You know all those Sinatra songs! I always used to sing at piano bars when I was young. Anywhere I went, if there was a piano, I would sing. You see, I was a bit of a show-off then.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah! I would go to a party in a great dress, and I’d dance all night in the center of the room, and I’d always sing at a piano. That was sixty, seventy years ago, but I loved it. You should never be embarrassed. You should have sung your heart out.”
The picture she was painting of herself was far different from the grandmother I knew, but it was one I could see clearly. I realized that inside the woman who survived an impoverished childhood, who selflessly raised two kids and worked when few women did, who, despite arthritic fingers and worsening eyesight, can still assemble one hundred perfect ravioli on any given afternoon, was a woman who loved the limelight, who could dance all night, and who sang at a piano, always.
We said goodbye, and when I hung up the phone I had a different perspective on my night at the ball. At the time, I had tried my hardest to live in the moment, to savor every minute of that night. The next day, I had rushed to tell my friends before I forgot a detail. I’d even been tempted to write it down in a journal, get it on the record, anything to preserve a magical evening that was over too soon. But now I know that it was a night I will carry with me. A night I will tell my grandchildren about—the night I danced the bows off my shoes.
I know I will remember that night, because my grandmother still does. But the next time I’m in a piano bar, I’ll sing.
Big
The holidays are coming, and I have an annual tradition of buying the house a Christmas present. For example, last year I bought the house a puppy.
I never got a thank-you note.
I keep thinking about getting the house another puppy, but this year I got it something it wanted more, which was delivered this morning.
Here’s what happened.
I have a 32-inch TV in an entertainment center that’s across the room from the couch, and as the years go by, the TV’s been getting smaller and smaller, and harder and harder to see.
I’m not getting older.
My TV is shrinking.
Maybe someone left it out in the rain, like the cake in that song, or maybe someone put it in the dryer, I don’t know. But I’d been thinking that this Christmas, I’d buy the house a big TV.
I’d been holding off because I didn’t want the hassle, and I knew it would be expensive, because whenever I look at the little ones, they seem fairly costly. In the past, I’d gotten free little TVs, using the reward points from a credit card on which I charge the other things the house wants, like handbags and shoes.
In other words, I’d been stalling on the big TV, and all the big TVs in the reward catalog cost a billion more points than I had, so I bit the bullet. I drove to the store, drawn to the TV department, eyes agog. It was dark, lit on all four sides by screens, like a TV cave. All of the TVs, from floor to ceiling, were tuned to the same football game, which was humongous.
I stared astounded as a football flew by, big as an airbus. Line-men tall as Godzilla crashed into other helmeted monsters, like worlds colliding. Gigantic cheerleaders jumped and yelled, their mouths big as swimming pools, and their breasts, well, you get the idea.
Wow.
Jeez.
There was enough plastic in those babies to keep all of us fresh for days.
In other words, everything on the big TVs was BIG.
Plus the colors were as vivid and pretty as flowers. The yellow in the team uniforms was bright marigold, the orange like Gerber daisies. I spotted blood on a jersey, red as a geranium. It was the most floral violence ever.
I fell in love.
Or rather, my house did.
It knew that it had made the right decision to stop being such a cheapskate and come to the big TV store. Its good judgment was confirmed when it looked around and noticed that none of the TVs was as tiny as the one at home, its ex-TV.
Then the question became which type of big TV to get, among the dizzying array of plasma TVs, LCD TVs, LED-LCD TVs, rear projection TVs, and tube TVs, whatever that is. I had no idea what I had at home, or what to choose, but a salesgirl told me that if your room has lots of windows, go with LCD, which probably stands for large colossal something.
So then the only question was, how large and colossal?
I had gone into the store thinking that a 42-inch TV would be big enough, because I wanted to keep it classy and tasteful. But all of a sudden, the 42-inch looked so puny, next to the 48-inch.
And the price wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Plus classy and tasteful is overrated, so I settled on the 48-inch.
Until I caught sight of the 52-inch.
Which was bigger.
And on sale.
In fact, the 52-inch cost less than the 48-inch, which I didn’t understand, because the 52-inch offered four extra inches of multicolored bigness.
So the 52-inch started to make sense to me.
Er, the house.
And the 52-inch was so gorgeous and easy to see, like Large Print TV. I was sure it wouldn’t shrink for a long, long time. So I bought it, and they delivered it this morning.
With a crane.
It’s so huge it doesn’t fit in the entertainment center. In fact, it barely fit in the front door.
It stands in its immense box in the family room, blocking the view of the Christmas tree, towering over the couch and chairs, like a monolith at Stonehenge. The cats and dogs sniff it in fear, and I don’t know whether to worship it or return it.
But I have a feeling I’ll just open it and watch it.
Forever.
Big love, from me and mine, to you and yours.
Family Photo
It’s a wonder that any family survives its family photo. The Flying Scottolines almost didn’t.
The blame begins and ends with me, and you’ll see why.
The whole thing was my idea in the first place. Mother Mary and Daughter Francesca were both at my house, visiting for the Christmas holidays. At the same time, I had to do a photo shoot for my website, so I was wearing my new red-striped sweater and having a photographer over. Plus I had gotten my hair blow-dried professionally.
Professional hair, new clothes, and a camera is a harmonic convergence for girls.
But first I needed cooperation from Mother Mary.
What were the odds?
I turned to her, explained the situation, and asked her if she wanted to take a family photo.
“Why would I?” she asked, looking up from her crossword. She was wearing her lab coat, which is her idea of lounge-wear.
“For fun. How often are we all together like this? If we wear something red, we could send out a Christmas card with a picture of us on it.”
“Who needs that?”
“We do,” I said, firmly. When I put on my firm voice, she knows I mean business. Also she was at my mercy, because I would withhold food and water. “And you can’t wear your lab coat.”
She lifted a gray eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not red, you’re not a doctor, and it makes you look crazy.”
She didn’t laugh, and I marched her upstairs, changed her three times, and got her dressed with only a minor fistfight. Francesca was her usual cooperative self,
so she showered and changed into a red sweater in no time, then even made me up, because she’s a born makeup artist. When I apply my eyeliner, it looks like an EKG.
Francesca turned to Mother Mary, mascara wand in hand. “Want me to make you up, too?”
“Why do I need makeup?”
“So you look good for the photo.”
“I look fine.”
“You do, but with the flash, you need a little makeup.”
“Hmph,” my mother said, submitting only because it was Francesca who asked. If it had been me, she would have stabbed me with the eyepencil.
So we all got pretty in our red sweaters and sat down on the couch in a straight line, like superannuated triplets. The dogs gathered at our feet in a way they don’t in real life, as they are camera hounds.
Sorry.
So the photographer snaps a few pictures and shows them to us, and we all notice that light is reflecting off my mother’s glasses, so you can’t see her eyes.
I say, “Ma, you have to take your glasses off.”
“How am I supposed to see?”
“It’s easy.” I pluck the glasses from behind her ears, fold them up, and set them aside. “Just look at the lens of the camera.”
“What if I can’t find it?”
The photographer answers helpfully, “I’ll wave my hand, and you can look at that.”
“Thanks,” I say, but Mother Mary remains doubtful, as she sinks back onto the couch.
The photographer starts snapping away again, then shows us the pictures, and this time, we all notice that Mother Mary is not smiling.
“Ma,” I say to her, “why aren’t you smiling?”
“Why should I?”
“Ma, you have to smile.”
Francesca puts a gentle hand on my mother’s shoulder. “You look so nice when you smile. Just smile, okay?”
“Hmph,” my mother says again, then we all take our seats, a few photos are snapped, and the photographer shows them to us. Again, we all notice that my mother isn’t smiling enough. Francesca and I are beaming, and my mother looks a little gassy.
“Ma, you have to smile more.”
“I can’t smile any more.”
“Yes, you can. Show your teeth.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Say cheese.”
Mother Mary means it when she says “cheese.”
My mother rolls her eyes. “What am I, a baby?”
Evidently, I think but don’t say, and we all sit back down.
An exhausting two hours later, we look at the photos, which have turned out terribly. Francesca and I are smiling, but my mother appears to be snarling. The camera seems to have caught her with the ch part of cheese, instead of the eese. Her teeth are showing like a wolf with dentures.
But that’s not the real problem. With all the focus on Mother Mary, we have failed to notice that I’m having a wardrobe disaster. The stripes running across my chest aren’t straight, like they were when the sweater was on the hanger. Instead, the lines run up my chest and down again, sagging at the ends, like a frown.
Bottom line, I’m a middle-aged woman, and my sweater has busted me.
Again, sorry.
Christmas card photos are so much fun.
We really do love each other. Really.
“Oh no,” I wail, and Francesca puts an arm around me. “It’s not you, it’s the bra.” My mother comes over, puts her glasses back on, and checks the pictures. And smiles, ear-to-ear.
Mother Mary Becomes A Rock Star
I’m back from book tour, and here’s the recap:
The crowds were happy to see Francesca and me, but they were happier to see Mother Mary. Even though she’s eighty-six, she made it to every nighttime event for ten days. And, yes, she wore her lab coat and wielded her back scratcher like a scepter, to thunderous applause.
Of course, it went to her little gray head. By the second signing, she wanted a limo, and by the third, a cut of the royalties.
Mother Mary rocks the crowd in her lab coat.
I told her to get an agent.
At each signing, she wowed everybody with the story of how she became Earthquake Mary, when she was the only person in South Florida who felt an earthquake that happened 300 miles away from her, in Tampa. I wrote about that in one of my stories, but I’m not sure anyone believed it until they heard it from the horse’s mouth. And of course, when I gave her the microphone, I couldn’t get it back.
At one bookstore, I physically had to wrest it from her tiny grasp. There’s nothing like a karate chop to your aged mother to warm a crowd.
Not only did she tell stories, she signed books. At many stores, the audience numbered as many as two hundred people, and Mother Mary signed every book in her adorably shaky script. She also took the time to meet everybody, kiss cheeks, and give out Tastykakes, which is my thank-you gift to my readers, because she taught me that if you love people, you feed them saturated fats.
She was on her best behavior. She made faces behind my back only once. Her single slip was when she met an elegant woman reader who asked her if she was really eighty-six, and Mother Mary answered, “Yes, and still horny!”
After that, I cautioned against the Dirty Grandma routine, in no uncertain terms. Raising your parent is harder than raising your child.
Francesca, of course, behaved flawlessly. She did more than her share, even wrangling the dogs. We brought Little Tony and Pip, though we didn’t make them wear lab coats.
Also we couldn’t find any small enough.
Francesca gave a speech about why she loves to write and answered each question with typical grace. In other words, she told the audience that I was a great mother and didn’t say that we had eaten dinner at McDonald’s four nights in a row.
Nor did she mention that I didn’t give the dogs a bathroom break because it would cost me book sales.
I’m an animal lover until my mortgage is involved.
Then they hold it in.
When the tour ended, Mother Mary said it made her feel like “a rock star,” so imagine my surprise when she announced that she wanted to return to Miami early.
“Really?” I asked her. “Why?”
“I’m cold, what do you think?”
“I’ll turn up the heat,” I said, but it was already set at 73 degrees. Even the cats were having hot flashes.
“It won’t help. I want to go home.”
“But you’re supposed to stay for Christmas.”
“Sorry, I’d rather be warm. Who needs winter?”
I tried not to take it personally and had her at the airport the next day, where I got all teary. It wasn’t until the drive home that I realized I shouldn’t be sad. Francesca would be home for Christmas, and there were plenty of families who wouldn’t be together at the holiday. I thought of people who had lost family members they loved, and still others who had family serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all around the world.
We would all be alone, together.
And that’s not what family is about, anyway.
Family may not be there on the holiday, but they’ll be there when you need them, like on book tour.
The family tour.
Family will help you out, even if it means eating a bag of cold French fries in a car, after a three-hour book signing.
At age eighty-six.
So to those of you who won’t be with your family this holiday, I share your pain—and your love.
Family is with us whenever it really matters.
And the rest of the time, they’re inside.
Happy Holidays, with love, to you and your family.
Unexpected
Let me tell you about the great gift I got this past Christmas, and it’s one that didn’t come with a bow.
It changed the way I think about my life.
I didn’t expect I would get this gift, going in. The day didn’t end like it started out, at all.
Which is kind of the point.
By way
of background, you should know that Daughter Francesca and I have spent every Christmas together ever since she was one, when Thing One and I divorced. She would spend Christmas Eve with him, and the day with me, and we were all happy about that, or at least as happy as anybody can be when their kid has to split herself in two.
But Francesca is older now, and this past Christmas she decided to spend the day with her father because they were visiting his family. I wasn’t happy about that, but I tried not to grumble too loudly, and you can imagine how well that worked. Me, shutting up about my feelings?
Me, shutting up at all?
So you know the answer:
Girlfriends!
I called my best friend Franca and whined. I always think that if I killed somebody, Franca would help me hide the body, but so far I haven’t killed anybody and I’ll probably never get the chance.
Which means that most of the time, Franca has to listen to me whine.
But this time she also solved the problem.
She’s divorced, too, and to my surprise, she told me that her kids would be spending Christmas with their father, although she had a better attitude about it than I, as she does in all things.
So we hatched a plan. We both love Meryl Streep and had been dying to see It’s Complicated, which was opening on Christmas, so we decided to go.
It’s not how I’d ever spent Christmas, but I met Franca at the theater, and lo and behold, it was almost full. We settled into our seats with popcorn, Diet Coke, and Raisinets, and I started to feel a little better. The crowd was in a holiday mood, and when I looked around, it was almost all middle-aged women like us. No surprise, as the movie is a total chick flick and we were all girl-crushing on Meryl.
So we were enjoying the movie, which, as you may know, is about a divorced woman who has an affair with her ex-husband. And about halfway through, there’s a scene in which Meryl Streep’s character gets wistful and says something to the effect that, “every divorced women wonders if she should get back with her ex-husband.”