Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (10 page)

My baby bird, daughter Francesca, is home from college for the summer, and I thought it would be fun for you to hear from her. I hope the following will help my fellow parental units to see how our college-age kids (sorry, adults) see us. So, below is from Francesca:

Now that I’m older, I imagined that living at home with my mother would be different. Not that it needed to change; we’ve always had the best relationship. I can honestly say that my mom is my best friend. But now that I’m twenty-one, I figured our dynamic would be more mature.

Not exactly.

My childhood nickname was Kiki, and my mom always had hundreds of nonsensical pet-names for me. The days of BooBoo, Baby Bumpy, and Mocha JaMocha are over. Or so I thought.

We were in the shoe department, trying to be cool (we both inexplicably get dressed up to go to the mall) when my mom looked up from the sandals and said, “Hey, Bumpy! Look at these!” I resorted to the oh-so-teenage, “
Mo-om
.” We totally blew our grown-up cover.

Back home, one change in our interaction wasn’t due to
my
age, it was due to hers. She’d read that she should drink red wine for her heart, so one night, she poured herself a glass and offered me one, too.

This alone was a big step. My mother doesn’t drink, and when I was younger, she decried the perils of alcohol with Prohibition-era ferocity. So, as she poured me a glass of wine, I felt as if we had turned a corner in our new, mature relationship.

I made sure to not drink more than one glass, but I wasn’t the one who had to be worried. After just a few sips, she started up: “Oh I feel it. I can feel it already. Can you feel it?” she asked, excitedly. And before my mom had even finished the glass, she was declaring, “I’m drunk!” like a triumphant frat boy. My mom’s night of boozing (still only one glass) quickly turned sour. She complained the whole night: “Ugh, I have a headache from that wine. I’m sleepy from that wine. I can’t sleep from that wine.” She required more post-party care than my freshman-year roommate.

Jeez, Mom, grow up.

But then, I’m not exactly the sophisticate I thought I’d be when it comes to our mother-daughter time. I’m embarrassed to admit that there are still moments when I’m embarrassed to be out with Mom. This is crazy, because she’s great, and I love spending time with her. But even as a grown (or nearly) woman, the shadow of an insecure thirteen-year-old follows me around. Like last week, I persuaded my mom to see a movie at ten-thirty, because secretly I knew the theater would be less crowded then, and it would be less likely that someone I knew would catch me on date-night with Mom. As it happened, I did run into an old friend from high school who was there on an actual date. Busted.

But it’s not just at the movies. Last week she gave me a ride to my doctor’s appointment. I had a wart on my toe removed and
also got the HPV vaccine, Gardasil. As we were checking out, my mom was being her usual friendly self, updating the receptionist on my life. It used to bother teenage-me when she shared the details of my life, but now I see it’s just love. And anyway, what could she really say?

“Today she got that Gardasil shot and got rid of those nasty warts!” Mom chirped. I cringed.

My mother has a way with words.

But truly, I’m lucky that I feel so close to my mom. We can talk about anything—even sex. In fact, it was her idea for me to get the HPV vaccine.

We’ve come a long way. When my mom was moving me out of my freshman year dorm, I was mortified that she found condoms in my nightstand. If that happened this year, it wouldn’t matter. I’m old enough to know what’s in a woman’s nightstand is her business.

That’s why I’m never, ever, looking in hers.

I’m not old enough.

Right, kid, now go empty the dishwasher.

What Francesca doesn’t realize is that she’ll always be my baby, no matter what age. But I have to admit, she’s grown into an incredible young woman who is everything I hoped she would be: smart, strong, funny, and loving. As you can see, she does tell the truth.

And now, she’s grounded.

Mother Mary and Brother Frank are here to visit, spending a week at my house, and I learned a few things you might be able to use when your own family comes to visit. By the way, let’s all stipulate at the outset that I love my family, even if it doesn’t sound like I do, below. But I like to keep it real, so what follows is the light side of the dark side of family visits, if you follow.

That said, here are my Top Ten Tips to Family Fun:

  1.
You can’t chloroform your mother.
What happened was that I wanted to take my mother to see the new movie about Edith Piaf. My mother loves Edith Piaf and is, in fact, the only person I ever met who knows who Edith Piaf is. When I heard that there was a movie about Edith Piaf, I thought it would be perfect for her. Only problem was, the movie theater was In Town, and my mother wouldn’t go In Town to see a movie, even one about Edith Piaf. We fought about it, and I considered chloroforming her and taking her there, but my brother said I couldn’t. So don’t do it. If your brother’s around.

  2.
Watching eggs cook makes them cook faster.
One morning, I was making fried eggs for breakfast, and my brother thought I should turn up the heat. I disagreed. We fought about it, after which he sat in stony silence and watched the eggs fry. You know what? They fried superfast. In fact, I think he fried them with his eyes. Grab your brother and try this at home. Fight first.

  3.
Too many cooks spoil the tomato sauce.
My mother and I tried to make one dinner together in my nice big kitchen, which was when I learned that no kitchen is big enough for two women to make dinner in, especially if they are blood relatives. And especially if they are mother and daughter. Take it from me, fighting will follow. And if a granddaughter joins them, something will explode. All that will remain is a small pile of dried oregano.

  4.
Getting four people into a car to drive to a restaurant takes as long as a full-scale expedition to Nepal, including sherpas.
After our cooking fiasco, I thought reservations would be the answer, but I simply couldn’t get four people to move to the car and get inside. I kept saying “are you ready yet” or “let’s go” or “time to rock” or “everybody outta the pool.” We were late for our reservation and had to wait for another table, which was when I learned that encouragement won’t make your family go faster, but slower. This is like the frying eggs, only the opposite, if you follow.

  5.
Family math is different from normal math.
There is a mathematical relationship between the number of people in the house and the number of times you run the dishwasher, but that relationship is
exponential. By this I mean, if you have two (2) new people in the house, for a total of four (4) people, you would guess that you’d have to run the dishwasher an extra time a day. Maybe two (2) times, at the most. But if you guess that, you’d be wrong. I learned you’ll have to run the dishwasher 362.5 times a day. (!) The .5 is what puts it over the top.

  6.
In a related tip, two extra people will produce 481 extra bags of garbage.
I saw this with my own eyes. And the number of people agreeing to take out the trash will always equal zero. (0).

  7.
Crossword puzzles are crack cocaine for mothers.
Every morning of her visit, my mother does crossword and moves on to jumbles, cryptoquotes, and word searches. She doesn’t look up until she’s finished. I supply her with coffee, but all I see is the top of her little gray head. My brother tells me this means she is happy. So, when your family visits and your mother is acting up and you can’t chloroform her, now you know what to do.

  8.
There is an inverse relationship between dieting and eating.
This is another one of those funky family math things. By this I mean, the more people in your house on a diet, the more often they will eat. So, in our case, we’re all on a diet, yet we eat all day long. However, we talk about our diet incessantly. That’s how you lose the weight. Keep talking.

  9.
Rain is your enemy.
You know what I mean. If it’s sunny, everybody can go to neutral corners, i.e., go outside or walk the dogs. But if it rains, you’re all inside together in the family room, fighting over what to watch on TV, having fought over which movie to
rent and deciding to let the whole thing go. In the end, you will end up in front of a continuous loop of
Everybody Loves Raymond
, and you will welcome it, because at least it’s not
Matlock
.

10.
In between the family fighting, there will be brief periods of harmony and even love, however unexpected.
For example, my mother and daughter bonded over their shared dislike of Jennifer Anniston. This came as a major surprise, at least from my mother, because Jennifer Aniston is Telly Savalas’s goddaughter and my mother loves Telly Savalas.