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

By the way, she already has a hearing aid, which took the Boer War for her to get, but she needs a second one. I cannot understand why the second hearing aid has become such a Donnybrook. If you have the first one, what’s the big deal? You’re no longer a hearing aid virgin.

Plus, I had asked her to get another hearing aid as my Christmas present, which gives me a powerful weapon for my battle plan. I ambush her at dinner, sneak-attacking. “Ma, I can’t believe you didn’t get the second hearing aid, for Christmas.”

Her snowy head remains down, and she stabs a piece of salmon with her fork, which means either that she didn’t hear me or she’s formulating her counter-offensive. Don’t underestimate her just because she’s older. Experience molds great generals. Patton was no kid, and Mother Mary makes him look like Gandhi.

“MOM, WHY DIDN’T YOU GET THE SECOND HEADING AID?”

She looks up calmly and blinks her brown eyes, cloudy behind her bifocals. “Why are you shouting at me?”

“I DON’T KNOW. MAYBE BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE A SECOND HEARING AID? JUST A GUESS.”

“How can you start in with that while I’m eating? You’ll make me choke.” Whereupon she flushes red and begins a coughing fit that ends with her clutching her chest.

Ka-boom! My barrage of guilt infliction is blown out of the water by a fake cardiac arrest.

I never had a chance.

The Battle of the Thirty-Year-Old Bra begins when she puts on the stretchy shirt we gave her for Christmas and declares that it doesn’t fit correctly. You don’t need to be on Project Runway to see the problem. The shirt doesn’t have darts at the waist, and her breasts are in Australia.

“Ma, the shirt is fine. You need a new bra.”

“What?”

“HOW OLD IS YOUR BRA?”

“Since when is that your business?”

“YOUR BREASTS ARE TOO LOW!”

“Look who’s talking.”

She has a point. I’m not wearing a bra, but I hear they work miracles if you actually care. I’m braless unless I have a book signing. Then I haul out my underwire, which is heavy artillery for girls.

Francesca says, gently, “If your bra is older than two years, the elastic has given out. Is it older than two years?”

Are you kidding? I think, but keep my own counsel. I haven’t bought a bra in five years and I know Mother Mary hasn’t bought one in ten. I would guess that her bra is twenty years old or maybe even thirty. In fact, I’d bet money that her bra’s in menopause and a member of AARP.

I could continue the story, but you get the idea. She admits that her bra is thirty years old, but she won’t get a new one, which doesn’t matter as much as a hearing aid, and though I pick my battles, in the end, I lose them all.

It’s no coincidence that Mother Mary and Napoleon Bonaparte are about the same height.

For someone who has almost no estrogen, I sure do cry a lot. I don’t mean in a bad way, but in a good way. I find myself moved to tears a lot lately, and by lately, I mean the past thirty years.

I used to cry whenever daughter Francesca was onstage, anywhere, doing anything. You should have seen me at her college graduation. I was positively deranged. The people sitting around me recoiled, and in the pictures from that day, I look drunk.

This past holiday season, I cried almost all the way through the Charlie Brown Christmas special. The waterworks began as soon as those cartoon kids started singing. When their mouths formed those perfect little circles, I simply could not deal.

I cry at all kinds of movies. I watched Fred Claus on TV and cried like a baby. Who cries at a Vince Vaughn movie? Worse, in a Gift-of-the-Magi moment this past Christmas, I gave Francesca a copy of Stephen Colbert’s holiday DVD, and she gave me one, too. When we watched it later, I cried at the end, when Stephen sings about believing in God.

It’s a comedy videotape.

I cried when I got my new puppy, too. The breeder, a lovely woman named Tina, put him in my arms, and I exploded with estrogen. Now I know why I have none left. It leaks out of my eyes whenever it gets the chance.

The latest example of what a crybaby I am took place when I took Mother Mary to the airport to go back to Miami. I know you’re thinking that I was crying because she was leaving, but to be completely honest with you, I’m not sure that’s the case. She’d been visiting me for a long time, and even the most devoted daughter will tell you that it’s never a hundred percent bad to put your mother on a plane outta town.

And most mothers would admit that, too.

So imagine my surprise when I started to get teary before we’d even reached the airport. I was so misty I couldn’t even find a parking space. If you’re weeping in short-term parking, do you have a problem?

Am I an estrogen junkie? A woman? Or merely Italian-American?

I managed to keep it together when we checked her in at the ticket counter and I asked for a pass to walk her to the gate. I do this because she sometimes gets confused, and you know how she feels about wheelchairs.

The same as she feels about second hearing aids.

So we had a bite to eat and I walked her to the plane, but by the time I hit the jetway, the tears were flowing like cheap wine. Mother Mary ended up comforting me.

“I’ll be alright, honey,” she said. “Hey, maybe I’ll meet somebody on the plane. You never know.”

Which only made me cry harder. Besides the fact that she had to cheer me up, I’ve had the same pathetic fantasy myself, and it’s never true. The only men you meet on the plane are married, which is the second worst thing about airplane travel, after honey pretzels.

Anyway, by the time we were at the door of the plane, I was such a basket case that the flight attendant rushed toward me with a cocktail napkin, for me to wipe my eyes. I swear to you, this is God’s truth. Her name was Susan, and she was on flight number 1651, USAir from Philly. Susan held me close while we discussed how much we loved our parents and she told me that she used to cry when she put her father on a plane, too.

By the way, Mother Mary was fine.

She found her way to her row by herself, and another flight attendant hoisted her roller bag into the overhead. She plopped herself into her seat, clutching her wrinkled plastic bag of crossword puzzle books, her special red pens, and a magnifying glass for when she reads. I got her a better one for Christmas, a big round circle, and when she uses it, she looks like a superannuated Nancy Drew.

I gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek, then sobbed my way off the plane and back through all the people in the airport, who averted their eyes. I’ve learned that’s what most people do when you make a complete fool of yourself in public.

But there’s always a few of them who look back.

They’re the ones who can’t watch Charlie Brown, either.

Many of us pet fanatics will admit that we learn life lessons from our dogs and cats, but few will go so far as to say that their role model is a puppy.