Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (43 page)

When I was in high school, my mother’s book tour meant that I had the house to myself, and I would spend the month eating a lot of spaghetti and Top Ramen noodles (cooking = boiling water), staying up late watching cable TV (swear words! edgy!), and cursing myself for not having the guts (or the contacts) to throw a totally sick house party. Instead, I was one of the kids who had her first sip of beer from my grandmother’s Bud Light on Ice at ten years old and then not again until college.

I know. Lame.

Well, now I’m at the pinnacle of hip, young adulthood—I can order my
own
Bud Light on Ice, and I’m living in the Big City, the single mother to the cutest baby I know, my dog, Pip. I have a nice little routine—I work out at the local gym, I go to work, I walk the dog, I cook food that my roommate reluctantly but kindly eats, I get dressed up on the weekend in hopes of something exciting happening. Being a grown-up is easy!

But that’s all about to change. I’m getting a new addition to my tiny family. And it was unplanned.

Little Tony is staying with me during my mother’s book tour. He’s the puppy my mother got just a few months after I got Pip. She and I are like the puppy version of the Sarah and Bristol Palin; a mother-daughter team raising newborns at the same time. Listen, you can’t plan these things, not around national book tours and not around presidential elections.

Every puppy is a blessing.

Just not
my
blessing.

See, there was a delicate balance to my life—one girl: one dog. This was enough to impress my friends, the way I blew right through the house-plant stage and onto the house-pet one (twenty-three-year-olds are easily impressed). But now, suddenly, there are two puppies in the house! Two dogs mean two walks, and two walks mean two pick-ups for two . . . well, you know. Who said I was ready for double duty? Much less double . . . ok, I’ll stop.

And Little Tony is not city-savvy. Despite his wise-guy moniker, he’s a backwoods doggie, through and through. Far from the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, he thinks peeing on the sidewalk is gross but peeing in the apartment is fun. When I walk him here, he growls at the passing Maltipoos and Labradoodles and Cockadoodle-dos, as if to curse them for their bedazzled collars and fancy grooming appointments. ‘Go choke on your organic, free-range bison biscuit,’ he seems to say! Pip tongues a piece of said biscuit still stuck in his teeth and feels embarrassed for everyone involved.

Me too, Pip, me too.

But when my mother called me a week ago, sounding stressed and worried about leaving her baby (Tony, not me) behind, I had to offer to take him, and truthfully, I wanted to. I’m happy to be able to actually help my mother with something.

I’m starting to realize that growing up is more than simply
distancing myself from my parents. Learning to function as an independent entity, a family unit of one (plus a pet and some friends) is certainly part of it, but a joy and obligation of adulthood is learning to re-approach our parents, not as children, but as equals. All my life, my mother has loved and supported me, and growing up means returning the favor.

I’m lucky that my mother is healthy and young, and she won’t need me to really take care of her for a good long time, if ever. But it’s nice to know that on the rare occasions she does need a little help, I can say, “I’m here for you.”

For all the car rides to play practice, hair blow-outs before the big dance, countless home-cooked meals, fashion second-opinions, career advising, sick-day chicken soup and movie marathons, post-breakup pep-talks, and phone calls for no reason but I’m walking somewhere and I’d like to hear her voice—to repay my mom for all that a mother does, let’s just say, I would have to walk a lot of dogs.

Mother’s Day is a good time to address the question of Hallmark holidays.

Bottom line, I’m in favor.

As in, two thumbs way up!

By way of background, a Hallmark holiday is defined by
wikipedia.com
, my guide in all matters, as “a disparaging term, used to describe a holiday that is perceived to exist primarily for commercial purposes.”

In other words, Bah, humbug!

To which I say, Lighten up!

Why celebrate only for excellent reasons? Who can’t be bothered to give a greeting card unless it’s absolutely warranted? Or bring a present unless it’s supremely well-deserved?

I celebrate any and all holidays, commercial or legit, religious or secular, without exception. Life is too short not to celebrate something, plus if you observe all the Hallmark holidays plus the national holidays, we’re only talking about thirty days max, which is still just a third of the time Europeans take for vacation.

So kick up your heels!

Especially on Mother’s Day.

Anyone who calls Mother’s Day a Hallmark holiday has never given birth.

OMG.

How graphic do we need to get? If you were describing childbirth to an alien, where would you start? With the breathing and the sweating? With the contractions like Gas From Hell? With the fact that sometimes, as in my case, they had to fetch forceps and vacuums and everything else in the tool shed to yank daughter Francesca screaming from my body?

You’re right. I don’t deserve a greeting card.

I deserve a medal.

And a new car. Plus the Prize Patrol should pull up in front of my house with helium balloons and a giant check.

All moms deserve the same, whether they’ve been through childbirth or not, because we were there for our little monsters, whether they realize it or not. And before you get all feisty that I’m not including fathers, your day will come. But for now:

Happy Mother’s Day!

Mothers are the ones on the front lines when noses leak, tears need to be wiped, and prom dresses selected. Moms did things for us we don’t even realize and could never remember. We got to school each day, from kindergarten through middle school, washed and fed, lunches packed, with barrettes in our hair. How did that happen?

Moms.

I can’t even begin to tell you all the great things Mother Mary did for me, starting with letting me make jokes about her herein.

When I was first published, she had a poster made that read
LOCAL AUTHOR
and drove around with it in the back window of her Dodge Omni. When I called to tell her that I made the
New York Times
bestseller list, she asked in amazement, “Does this mean that they read you in New York?”

“Yes,” I replied.

She even called me last week after she heard about the swine flu, and told me not to eat bacon.

That’s love.

It’s not good information, but it’s love.

In fact, basically any product recall, from peanut butter to baby strollers, she calls me. If a storm is heading my way, she calls me sooner than it’s on TV. Doppler radar has nothing on Mary Scottoline.

Bottom line, she’s thinking of me every minute, and any news she hears, she relates to me.

Anything I am I owe to Mother Mary.

Doesn’t that merit a holiday?

A three-dollar card?

Some flowers? Chocolates? A book or a sweater?

Is a thank-you so out of the question?

Not to me. I’m on it.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

I love you.

And thanks.

You may have heard about the bra that stopped a bullet. It happened in Detroit, where a woman heard a break-in at her neighbor’s house, went to the window, and a bad guy fired at her. The bullet shattered the glass, but was deflected by the underwire in her Miracle bra.