Lisa Scottoline - Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog - The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

Brad and Angelina look like good parents to me. I don’t sweat that they’re not married. I don’t think you need a marriage to raise a kid. Families come in all shapes and sizes. I became a single parent when my daughter was an infant, and I remember when someone at school told her she was an “only child.” She came home and asked me, “Does that mean you’re an ‘only mom?’ ”

Answer: Yes.

I don’t think it takes a village to raise a child. On the contrary, I think it takes one person who loves the child and places that child’s needs and interests above his own, for a good, long time. Like decades. And if you’ve done that for a child, it stands to reason that you’re going to miss them when they go, even if you gave them the roots and wings required by Hallmark cards.

So what do you do about this sadness you feel?

Here’s how I think about it, and it helps:

Recognize that your child is just traveling through. You don’t own your child. You’re just her caretaker for a very long time, because you willed her into existence. Even so, her existence is separate from yours. It’s easy to forget this, especially if you’re a good parent, because you can get so close to your child that your interests are often perfectly aligned. You remember times when you had to fight for your child, whether it was to get her a doctor’s appointment in a busy flu season or to score her the last Furby, back when every kid wanted a Furby.

But don’t be fooled.

You and your child are different people, and your child is traveling through your life, just as you’re traveling through hers. All of us are traveling through this life, and though our paths overlap for a time, like routes on a highway map, eventually we all separate, one from the other.

And I’m not talking about college here.

Think about traveling through, and you’ll be able to let your kid go. It’s just like she took the business route and you took the local. You might end up in the same place again, and it doesn’t mean she won’t come back, God knows.

And you can always hold the cats hostage.

I think the world divides into two groups: people who take advantage of membership rewards programs, and people like me.

A long time ago, I applied for an American Express card, but I was rejected. I had charged my way to becoming a writer, and my credit history ranged from Slow Pay to You Must Be Joking. The measure of creditworthiness is the FICO score, with 800 or so the best, like the old SAT scores. I couldn’t get into any college on my FICO score. My FICO score was my weight.

Eventually I paid back every penny of my debts, but my FICO score haunted me. I couldn’t get a credit card from Target and my books were bestsellers in Target. I don’t think this happened to James Patterson.

Then, one day, American Express relented-with a qualification. They told me they would give me a “starter” American Express card. The baby Amex had a thousand-dollar credit limit and training wheels. It even looked younger; it wasn’t cashgreen, it was transparent, as if it couldn’t be trusted with a color. It was a credit card, pre-puberty.

Still I took the card and became Financial Barbie. I never missed a payment and I sent in the whole balance every time, then I reapplied for the Big Girl American Express card. And was rejected again. But on the phone, they happened to mention that they could give me the American Express card for small business, if I were a small business. They asked, “Are you a small business?”

I answered, “Why, yes, the smallest.”

On the phone, I deemed myself Lisa Scottoline, Inc., which is a new way to incorporate yourself that I invented, and they gave me a small-business credit card, which came with a higher credit limit and its own color-a respectable, corporate, gray. Since then, however, I still keep getting rejected for the real-deal American Express card.

Whatever. I’ve struck out three times now and I have to pretend it doesn’t matter. And that’s not the point, anyway.

The point is that unbeknownst to me, my small-business American Express card has, all these years, been racking up Membership Rewards.

Wow! Membership Rewards! I had no idea what that was, but it sounds great. It sounds like an exclusive club that I’m a member of, automatically. And rewards are always good. I get a reward and I didn’t even find anything? Hell, I didn’t even know anything was lost!

I learned about the Membership Rewards the other day, when I actually read my endless pile of junk mail. I saw a slick catalog full of mixers, Bose radios, rolling luggage, golf clubs, and “timepieces,” which is what we members call watches. Instead of prices, the catalog had points. I flipped to the front and saw that I had a “point balance,” which was 52,140.

Yay!

So everything in the catalog was free, or at least the stuff under 52,140 points. I was so excited that I called up my friend, but she had already spent her points on his-and-her mountain bikes, a portable DVD player, and a toaster from England. She’d even gone to Europe on her frequent flier miles, but I will never figure out how to cash in those babies and I have approximately three billion, which is twelve zillion times my SAT score and fifteen zillion times my FICO.

But I digress. I made a cup of coffee and sat down with the Membership Rewards catalog.

Two hours later, I had dog-eared ten pages, circled fifteen items, and downed another cup of coffee. My stomach had twisted into a knot, my heart was pounding, and I was in a tizzy of indecision. I couldn’t pick between the Sony digital camera, the new iPod, or the Dyson “animal vacuum,” which I loved for the name.

And if I didn’t want those items, the catalog offered trips, meals, and gift cards. Worse, I was even “pre-approved” for double my point balance, which admitted me to the truly pimp point class. If I wanted the awesome 37-inch plasma TV, Amex would send it to me and charge the difference-on my credit card.

Hmmm.

Bottom line, all this free stuff paralyzed me. If I had been spending dollars, I could have made the decision, but the fact that it was points had me flummoxed. I didn’t want to blow my chance to get something free by getting the wrong free thing. I set the catalog aside for another day.

A point saved is a point earned.

I just got back from the White House. I stole nothing of value. More accurately, the thing I stole didn’t cost anything.

Let me explain.

The National Book Festival is an annual book fair sponsored by the Library of Congress and started by First Lady Laura Bush, to promote literacy. It’s held on the National Mall, where a series of tents had stages for seventy authors, representing all types of books. Approximately 150,000 people attended the Festival, a record crowd.