In the end, our own personal happiness is about figuring out what makes us feel the most ourselves, and living that way-and to h.e.l.l with what anybody else thinks.
So when you"re making a list of resolutions, please do make some unresolutions, too.
It will be a Happier New Year.
Hearing Voices
We"ve all heard that when you have to make a decision, you should listen to your inner voice.
But I have a question.
What if you disagree with your inner voice?
For example, here"s what happened to me. I went to Boston to see daughter Francesca in a show that ran for three weekends. I decided to stay for the duration because it was easier than driving back and forth, and happily for me, as a writer, I can work anywhere.
Especially where there"s room service.
I write great whenever room service is around. I love room service like Hemingway loved Scotch. I think the course of American letters would have been completely different if Fitzgerald had known about In-Room Dining. I bet Faulkner would have gone with the mustard salmon with pommes frites pommes frites. He might have written As I Lay Eating, As I Lay Eating, instead. instead.
Anyway, I stayed in a hotel and even brought my dog Ruby, who once killed my finger. If I left her at home, I was afraid she"d kill something else, namely one of the other dogs. Besides, it"s fun to have a dog in a hotel.
She likes room service, too.
For the last weekend of the show, mother and brother flew up from Miami and we had a great time. Afterwards, we were scheduled to drive home together on Sunday, but when we woke up that morning, it was snowing like crazy. Almost a foot of snow had already fallen, and freezing rain, hail, and other pointy things poured from the sky. Only snow plows, salt trucks, and the proverbial emergency vehicles were on the roads. The governor issued the usual travel advisory, which boiled down to: from Miami and we had a great time. Afterwards, we were scheduled to drive home together on Sunday, but when we woke up that morning, it was snowing like crazy. Almost a foot of snow had already fallen, and freezing rain, hail, and other pointy things poured from the sky. Only snow plows, salt trucks, and the proverbial emergency vehicles were on the roads. The governor issued the usual travel advisory, which boiled down to: Are you nuts?
So mother, brother, daughter, and I convened in a hotel room to make a decision about whether to stay or go. Mother said, "It"s c.o.c.kamamie to drive in this weather."
Brother said, "Let"s stay an extra day and go home Monday."
Daughter said, "I vote for Monday, too."
My inner voice agreed with all of them. It said, It"s only common sense to stay another day. Plus, I can order that roast chicken I like. They"d cook it for me and bring it on a tray with a rose, then take away the dirty dishes, like I"m a baby. A little writer baby.
But I disagreed with my inner voice. A contrary voice was coming out of me, and I think it was my outer voice. It said, I"ve been in this hotel for almost three weeks. It"s costing me a fortune. I finished my book. I"m out of underwear and Iams. I want to go home, and the governor is not the boss of me.
So I said, "I have four-wheel drive. Let"s rock."
We left at noon in a blizzard, and we were the only car on the Ma.s.sachusetts Turnpike. At least I think we were, but I couldn"t see much through the sleet frozen on the windshield, in patches shaped like major continents. I couldn"t clear the windshield because ice clung to the wipers, transforming them into twin Popsicles. I blasted the defrost on MAX, but the effect was MIN, except that windows steamed up and the interior temperature hovered at greenhouse effect.
I couldn"t drive above 45 mph because once I hit 50, we fishtailed, which was when I realized that although I had a will in place, all of my beneficiaries were in the car. So if we all died driving home, my hard-earned money would go to the state, in which case the governor would be the boss of me.
We stopped four times on the way, both for dogs and people, and the lowest moment occurred at a "canteen" in Connecticut, when we got out and saw that the car was completely encased in a thin layer of ice, as if it had grown an impervious sh.e.l.l, like the Batmobile.
That is, if the Batmobile contained The Flying Scottolines and a corgi with behavioral problems.
We finally got home at nine o"clock that night. Bottom line, a trip that usually took six hours took three extra. And the whole way, I was hearing voices. It was my Inner Voice yelling at my Outer Voice.
But amazingly, when we got home, neither mother, brother, daughter, or dog said I-told-you-so.
Which is why they"re the beneficiaries.
Whoopee Socks
Mother Mary is visiting, and you know what that means. More Scottoline family hijinks, most recently in the clothes department. The change in climate from Miami to Philly has caused major wardrobe drama, and at all times, we have much discussion about what my mother should wear that day. Turtlenecks strangle her. Wool scratches her. Silk snags. Acrylic is perfect but only in cardigans. Layers are too bunchy. Given how picky my mother is, imagine my surprise when she came down for breakfast one morning wearing a white lab coat over her clothes.
My daughter and I exchanged glances.
Mind you, Mother Mary is 411 tall and about a hundred pounds. Her hair is white and cut close to her head, and with her brown eyes behind round gla.s.ses and her nose curved like a beak, she looks like a baby snow owl. But in the lab coat, she could have been Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppet Show. The Muppet Show.
Why she was wearing a lab coat, I had no idea. I didn"t even know she had gone to medical school.
"Ma, is the doctor in?" I asked, setting a mug of coffee in front of her.
"What do you mean?"
"Why are you wearing a lab coat?"
"I"m eighty-three. Can"t I wear what I want?"
"But where"d you get a lab coat?"
"What"s the difference?"
"I"m just curious. Don"t you think it"s a little strange?"
"Why?"
I gave up. Answering a question with a question is my mother"s favorite thing, and if she wanted to play Dr. Mom, it was fine with me. Plus I had noticed that some older people get tired of dressing normal and start wearing strange outfits. Not all older people, but some. I"m not naming names. They"ve been getting dressed nice for a long time, and at some point, some of them they just stop bothering. For example, under her lab coat, my mother had on cotton pants and a Miami Vice T-shirt she"s worn since Don Johnson was hot.
Who can blame her?
Not me, not really.
At her age, I"ll probably be the same way. In fact, I"m the same way already. When I"m in first-draft hibernation, I wear the same fisherman"s sweater every day, which I bought for twenty dollars from a street vendor in New York. It smells like the subway and guarantees I"ll be single forever. It"s the comfort food of clothes, and since it harms no one, who cares?
I started frying eggs when daughter Francesca said, "I like the lab coat. Wouldn"t it be funny if we all wore uniforms instead of clothes?"
"It might." I decided to play along. "What uniform would you wear?"
"A trashman jumpsuit."
"Why?"
"It would be so easy, and if you got trash on it, it wouldn"t matter."
My mother nodded. "See, that"s why I like my white coat. It"s so easy."
Wrong. Chico"s is easy. Lab coats are crazy.
It got me thinking about uniforms. I remembered with fondness my sash from the Columbus Day parade, but that"s not the same thing. A mail lady uniform would be cool, because you can carry dog biscuits in the big pockets. The UPS guy gets to wear knee socks, which are way easier than pantyhose, but who wears pantyhose anyway? I wouldn"t mind a chef"s uniform, because I could gain three hundred pounds and still fit into those checkered pants.
Then I knew. "I"d go with a motorcycle cop uniform. I like the boots."
"And the gun," my mother added.
Francesca looked over.
Half the time, we get in a wardrobe rut that might as well be a uniform, right? For example, when I"m in second draft, which lasts three months, I switch to the sweater-jeans-Danskos trifecta common to suburban moms and English majors. At book signings, I pair a pretentious jacket with pretentious jeans, because they match. And the little black dress is my uniform for the night shift.
Maybe it"s not the worst thing. Uniforms make our life easy. What we wear reflects the way we see ourselves and sends a clear message about us.
My mother was saying, "My sister had quite an outfit. After she lost all that weight, she used to go down the Navy Yard in shorts and high heels, with whoopee socks."
"What are whoopee socks?" my daughter asked, and my mother lifted a thin, white eyebrow.
"You know."
But maybe not all messages need to be so clear.
Wants and Needs
Daughter Francesca came home from visiting a friend the other day and said, "Mom, you know what you need?"
Uh oh.
Leave it to your kids to let you know what you need. You thought you had what you needed, if not everything you wanted, and you were happy with that, because you adhere to the teachings of a certain philosopher-king who says that you can"t always get what you want, but you can get what you need.
"What do we need?" I asked.
"A home theater."
"Do tell."
So Francesca sat down at the kitchen island and told me all about her friend"s home theater. A plush room with a hugescreen TV. Picture quality to rival any multiplex. Three stepped rows of cushy recliners that moved forward and back at the touch of a b.u.t.ton. Stereo speakers for crystal-clear digital sound. No windows or noise to cause glare or distraction. In short, a total movie experience, without the long lines, sticky floors, or suspect upholstery.
By the end of the conversation, you know what I was thinking. Mick Jagger is a false idol, and I need a home theater.
All I have is a home, and while I used to think that was enough, I was wrong.
My new home theater was already taking shape in my mind, fully-loaded. It included all of the above, plus some custom touches that Francesca and I came up with. Cupholders in the recliners. A popcorn machine. We stopped short of the mannequin inside the fake ticket window, because that would be creepy.
We even thought of signs we could hang on the walls: There"s no place like home theater. Bless this home theater. Home, sweet, home theater.
Then we started walking around our house, figuring out which room we could destroy, I mean, convert.
We considered the family room, but it had too many pesky windows, and even if we put up shades, we could never get the room dark enough. There was just too much sunlight streaming in, ruining everything. Plus views of evergreen trees and holly bushes we"d have to obliterate.
We considered the bas.e.m.e.nt, but I nixed that idea. My bas.e.m.e.nt is dark enough, but it"s cold and damp. Spiders live there, and the occasional mouse.
All my mice are occasional.
If they weren"t, that would be a problem I"d have to do something about and the kind of thing you"d never admit to in print. I know they"re occasional because I put occasional traps down and find dead mice, but only on occasion. Also I think of them as field mice, which are a normal and natural part of country life, and not mere rodents, which are disgusting. And I do live in a rural area, if you don"t count the Corporate Center. So all I have, really, are occasional field mice.
Either way, the bas.e.m.e.nt home theater isn"t happening.
Unless the movie is Willard. Willard.
We went to the dining room and looked it over. I have a symbolic dining room and consider myself lucky. In my broke days, I always dreamed of having a house with a dining room I didn"t use. It"s not as if my dining room is too fancy to use, because nothing in my house is too fancy. It"s that I"ve run out of bookshelves, so books cover all the surfaces in the dining room, including the table and chairs. While some people have a pile of books to be read, the so-called TBR pile, I have a dining roomful of books to be read, or a TBR dining room. The books present an obstacle to a home theater, but I can"t bring myself to replace Th.o.r.eau with Transformers III. Transformers III.
So the dining room is out.
We ran out of rooms and looked around for a place to build an addition for the home theater, but by then we both knew we were pipe dreaming. There was no place for an addition, and it would cost a fortune. We resigned ourselves to the fact that our home would forever lack a home theater.
But we hold out hope that those friends of hers will ask us over.
Charity begins at home theater.
Meow
So I have two kittens, Mimi and Vivi. They"re eight months old and although they look a lot alike, their personalities couldn"t be more different.
This is A Tale of Two Kitties.
Mimi is an adorable black-and-white kitten who looks like Figaro from Disney"s Pinocchio, Pinocchio, with white paws like cartoon gloves and a matching stripe down the center of her face. She has golden eyes set close together, and her nose is jet black. She loves to be petted, eats whatever is put in front of her, and wakes me up by dancing on my face. with white paws like cartoon gloves and a matching stripe down the center of her face. She has golden eyes set close together, and her nose is jet black. She loves to be petted, eats whatever is put in front of her, and wakes me up by dancing on my face.
She also has a repertoire of great noises, including a gratifying purr and a questioning chirp that sounds like, Mrrrp? And when she chirps, she curls her black tail into a question mark. Genius.
If Mimi catches a mouse, she brings it to me alive, so that I can scoop the poor thing into a tumbler and set it free. Obviously, she doesn"t have the heart to kill anything.
In fact, Mimi is so affectionate that the other day, my daughter came hurrying into the kitchen to say that she had been petting the kitten, who had actually drooled with happiness. I didn"t believe it, so Francesca returned Mimi to her lap and scratched the kitten"s head. In a few minutes, Mimi drifted into a feline fugue state and started dripping. scratched the kitten"s head. In a few minutes, Mimi drifted into a feline fugue state and started dripping.
It was cuter than it sounds.