Stories hold a power all their own. Think of Scheherazade, telling stories so good they saved her life. Or the thousands of fables and legends that have lasted through centuries. They answer a primal need to know about each other, to learn from each other, and to talk to each other.
And as we know, a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A story without an ending is like a sentence without a punctuation point. In my view, that’s what happened to The Sopranos. The story stopped, but it didn’t end, and they’re not the same thing. The promise of once-upon-a-time is that there will be a they-lived-happily-ever-after, or at least, they-all-got-whacked. The fact that so many Sopranos viewers got angry at its ending proves the power of a story. It didn’t matter to them that Tony Soprano was fictional. They still wanted to know what happened to him.
Sadly, The Sopranos was the only TV show I watched, and now it’s gone. There are no good stories on TV anymore; I mean normal, scripted shows like the ones I loved. Sex and the City. Seinfeld. Going farther back, I adored M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Those stories got people talking to each other the next morning around artifacts known as watercoolers. Star-bucks would do, too; no matter what the beverage, we’d all gab about the story we’d seen on TV the night before.
But now TV isn’t about story, but contest. Who is the best singer? Who the best inventor? Best chef? Dress designer? Men compete for women; women compete for men. We watch game shows, or shows about real lives, but reality TV is the antithesis of fiction and it has hijacked story.
So what happens to a popular culture without story?
Paris Hilton.
At the same time that story has disappeared, gossip has exploded on TV and in newspapers, magazines, and blogs. I think these two things are related. Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Nicole Ritchie have become our fictional characters. Angelina and Brad have replaced Edith and Archie; Tom and Katie took over from Lucy and Ricky.
Jennifer Aniston is the new Rachel Green.
Celebrities are our heroes and heroines now, discussed the next day over latte or lunch. We have such a strong need to talk to each other, to have some commonality of story, that we’re finding it in celebrities. In effect, we’re turning reality into fiction. Using actors and actresses, just off duty.
The plotlines of our celebrity characters tend to fall into a pattern—how the mighty have fallen—but that’s still juicy. They marry and divorce. They go to rehab and come out again. The paparazzi have become our new storytellers.
Some of the celebrity stories have unhappy endings, but mostly they go on and on. Next week there’s a new episode, like an arc in a plotline. The characters reproduce, shave their heads, get tattoos. Sometimes they get their tattoos on Miami Ink or buy a Harley customized on American Chopper, and we can watch that, too.
And if it’s not too meta to follow, sometimes the celebrities fictionalize themselves in a reality series. In The Sarah Silverman Show, the comedienne employs her real-life sister to play themselves in a scripted storyline. Tori Spelling fictionalized herself in NoTORIous. We’ve got plenty of actors, but no spare parts.
And how is this working for us? Not great.
It leaves us with a perennially empty feeling. We find the celebrities empty, and at some level, we find ourselves empty for paying them so much attention. We’ve become reluctant voyeurs, and at some level, we know they’re just people trying to live their lives. It hurts them, and it hurts us, too. Our culture begins to lack content, depth, and substance. We miss the richness of human experience that story embodies, reflects, and carries forward.
We might have to go back to reading books.
Yay!
Hairy, The Sequel
I used to have only two dogs, golden retrievers, and everybody would ask me if they shed.
Answer? Yes.
I still have the goldens, plus now there are two Cavaliers and a corgi, but nobody asks me if the dogs shed.
Why?
It’s obvious.
I’m wearing the answer.
I’m covered with dog hair, all the time. It’s stuck on my T-shirts. It weaves itself into my sweatpants. My sweaters have sweaters of their own.
I read recently about this woman who makes sweaters from dog hair, and I would avoid her at all costs. The last thing I need is a dog-hair sweater. A dog-hair sweater covered with dog hair is redundant, at best.
On the plus side, I’m warm at all times, even in coldest winter. When I have a hot flash, I could spontaneously combust.
I’m not complaining, merely observing. If you’re the kind of person who acquires five dogs, you’re not the kind of person who worries about looking neat as a pin. It ain’t gonna happen.
And you can only lint-roll so often. I don’t even bother when I have a book signing, because my beloved readers have come to expect some degree of dishevelment in me, and I do not disappoint. On the contrary, I feel that dog hair adds to my credibility.
I write not only what I know, but what I wear.
I lint-roll only on the rare occasion when I have a date, because then I’m trying to act like something I’m not.
Sane. Clean. Superbly in control.
Take the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. I read recently that she said something like, “Dogs and children belong in their own bed.”
Men love Catherine Zeta-Jones.
I’m not like her.
I think children, dogs, and cats belong in my bed, along with a great book, a box of piping-hot pizza, and a cold Diet Coke. Maybe some chocolate cake, too. Also The Godfather on TV.
Dog-hair party!
And dog hair blankets not only my clothes, but my couch, chairs, and rugs. I buy quilted covers that sit on top of the furniture and are supposed to protect it from dog hair and muddy paws, and I even had the covers personalized with THE GIRLS, RUBY, and LITTLE TONY.
But they should read DOG HAIR, MORE DOG HAIR, and DOG HAIR, THE SEQUEL.
Also they have to be moved every time you want to sit down, which gets old. So sometimes I end up leaving the covers on the floor, where the dogs go sit on them, covering them with dog hair. I regard this as efficient. Why should the dogs have to climb on the couch to shed?
Also, this way, I can get dog hair on the cover and the couch at the same time, because we both know that the dogs are going to climb up next to me on the couch, to watch the big TV.
The only thing I don’t love is when I find dog hair in the kitchen, or on a plate. And I admit it, this happens. When I cook, sometimes a dog hair on my sleeve will fall into the pan and I have to get it out with a fork. It puts me off my food, right there in the kitchen.
And the other day I had to pick a dog hair off my lip. It was long and yellow, so it had to be one of the goldens’.
You know it’s bad when you can identify which dog’s hair it is.
Then somebody gave me a plate and a matching mug that reads Everything Tastes Better With Dog Hair.
It’s a really cute gift, but I disagree. And I actually know.
So I sat down on my couch, went onto my laptop, and ordered a special pet vac made by Black & Decker. Peach sat beside me, eyeing the screen with concern.
I looked down and gave her a pat, which was when I saw it, on her head.
A long strand of fake-blond hair clung to her ear.
Gotcha.
Library Slut
I’m a library slut.
I visit libraries every year, speaking and fundraising, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to know librarians and support public libraries.
I’ll tell you why.
I owe them.
I wouldn’t be an author, or a bookaholic, without libraries.
Mother Mary hates it when I say this, but I grew up in a household with lots of love and meatballs, but only one book.
No, not the Bible.
You know my mother better than that.
The book was TV Guide.
Imagine my surprise when I got older and learned that not a
ll books had Lucille Ball on the cover.
I discovered my love of reading in my school library, where the notion of a whole roomful of books seemed extraordinary. That librarian saw that I was a nascent bookworm and sent me home one day with a list of local libraries, and my father took me to all of them.
He waited in the car like a dog. There was no TV in the library.
Of course, once inside, I had no idea how to choose a book and was way too scared to ask anyone. But there were some books that had a picture of a man in profile on the spine, and the man had a big nose like my Uncle Rocky.
And me.
All of The Flying Scottolines have nice, big noses. Mother Mary likes to say that we get more oxygen than anyone else.
She’s right. If I’m breathing, you’re dead.
Anyway, because of his nose, the man on the spine felt like family, so his were the books I checked out and read like a fiend. Like our girl crush, Nancy Drew.
Only later did I find out that the man wasn’t Uncle Rocky, but some guy named Sherlock Holmes.
Who isn’t even Italian.
Bottom line, that’s why I’m a mystery writer today.
There was another way I chose my library books, then. When I was little, the card in back of the books stayed with the same book, so I used to slide the card from its tight manila pocket and look at the card to see how many people had checked out the book. If there were a lot of signatures, I’d choose that book.
Not the worst method, in a way. It may have been the low-tech equivalent of a bestseller.
But my favorite thing about the library was my library card. It was the first piece of grown-up ID that I got, and it felt like a veritable ticket to adulthood. I carried it proudly in a padded Barbie wallet that otherwise held only a photo of Troy Donahue.
You might have to look him up.
The Troy Donahue photo came with the wallet, from the days when wallets came with photos. Nowadays, you’re on your own. Your wallet has no friends.
But to stay on point, I will never forget my library card. It was small, stiff, and orange, and it bore my name in full. LISA MARIA SCOTTOLINE. Next to my name was a metal plate embossed with four numbers. I used to go home and press my finger against the numbers on the metal plate, which were freshly inked from my library trip.
Believe it or not, my numbers were 3937.
How do I remember that, when I can’t remember where I put my car keys?
Simple.
Any memory lasts when it’s linked with an emotion, and the library card meant the world to me. Its message was clear:
I read, therefore, I matter.
It gave me an identity, as a reader. It told me that others valued what I valued. That I wasn’t alone, like some weirdo bookworm.
It’s a powerful message, one that I got loud and clear. And it’s a message that librarians and libraries give every day, without knowing it, to children and to adults everywhere around the world.
That’s why I love libraries.
Librarians, I owe you.
And I’m yours.
A Picture Saved
Daughter Francesca has grown up and moved away, but I still have plenty of reminders of her here, at the house.
And lately I’m wondering if plenty is too many.
Like any kid, she produced tons of stuff in school—stories, worksheets, poems, French essays, math problems, and countless drawings, from starter rainbows to crayoned self-portraits to pictures of our dogs, cats, guinea pigs, and a bunny named Pee-wee. She brought all the drawings home, where I made a fuss over each, and the ones I didn’t hang on the refrigerator door, I put away in a cardboard box. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.
Especially not while she was watching.
Then I forgot about them, and a habit was born. When one box filled up, I scribbled the year on it and got another, then another, and I’d put them away somewhere, and before I knew it, I had saved almost everything Francesca produced in elementary, middle, and high school.
I still have it all, boxed and labeled, upstairs in the attic.
I’ve never done anything remotely as organized, before or since.
I’m hoping this doesn’t sound dumb, or obsessive, though of course I’m crazy about my kid and I’m glad I saved a lot of this stuff. For example, I remember when she was getting ready to go off to college and she was really worried. I thought back to her first day of elementary school and went digging in the boxes. Amazingly, I was able to find, in the 1993 box, a drawing she had made, which showed me kissing her good-bye on our porch. Under the picture, she had written in a childish printing:
“Before the first day of school I was a nervus reck. Wen the day came I just said everything is gowing to be ok.”
Cute, huh?
She spells better now.
Anyway, that night, I taped her drawing to her bathroom mirror, so she saw it when she woke up on the morning she was going to leave for college. And with it, I wrote her a note that said:
“This is how you’ll know you’ll be okay at college. Because ten years ago, you were afraid of the first day of school, and everything was okay.”
Aww.
Now that’s the kind of moment savers live for. It made her happy, it made me happy, and all because I had a drawing from almost forever ago.
But I still have the stuff, and lots of other stuff besides. I saved her clothes because I kept thinking I’d give them away, and in her bedroom is almost every toy or stuffed animal she was ever given.
But it makes me think.
How much do you save of your kid’s stuff?
How long do you save it for?
And why can’t I part with it now, after I’ve parted with her?
I went into her old bedroom the other day, mainly to find the cat, and I started looking around, at all the things on the shelves. Each one is a memory. Breyer horses she got from me, a stuffed Jiminy Cricket from Mother Mary, and a photo of her with my father, now deceased, both of them leaning on our old VW station wagon.
What to keep, and what to throw away?
Keep the photo, sure, but the Jiminy Cricket matters as much. And those plastic Breyers aren’t going anywhere.
I eyed her dresser, which was covered by a fine layer of dust. And on top of her jewelry box lay something I didn’t know she had:
A stack of index cards on which I had drawn cartoons. I used to slip them into her lunch to make her laugh, in middle school. I picked them up and flipped through them.
She had saved every one.
The Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space
I’ve written a lot about what it’s like to have Daughter Francesca out of the house, and about how much I miss her, and all of it’s true. But if this collection proves anything, it’s that time changes things. I used to be in a sort of motherly mourning.
Now, well, I’m a merry widow.
Not exactly, but at times.
The bottom line is, being an empty nester isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Let me tell you why.
To begin, let’s review. I’m a single mother and have been most of my life. So for about twenty years, I’ve had sole responsibility of a certain little human being. But the truth is, married or no, every mother relates to her child as if she has sole responsibility, because responsibility for a child is something that we carry in our hearts.
All mothers are single mothers, inside.
Proof is, even if a hubby or caretaker is feeding our kid, we know when it’s time for her to eat. We know when she gets sleepy, we know when she’s waking up. We know that if her nose was sniffly that morning, then it will be worse by four o’clock, too late to get a doctor’s appointment. We’re always keeping a mental clock of what her day is like. We’re always thinking about our children, no matter what we’re doing, like tape that runs in the back of our minds, on a continuous loop in our brains.
Call it the mommy lobe.
That’s the stuff of our b
ond. We’re connected to our children, all the time, the same as if the cord were still there, a twisted strand of flesh and lifeblood, thick as a jump rope.
I’m sure that there are plenty of dads who feel the same way, and whose brains play the same tape. I think my father did, or at least I felt he did.
But I have ovaries, and I write what I know.
So if you’ve had this responsibility all your adult life, or at least as far back as you can remember, it gets pretty hairy when your baby bird flies the coop, even though that’s been inevitable since she poked through the egg. It feels as if your very reason for being suddenly drops out. I know it seems obvious, but I’ve lived it, and it wasn’t so apparent to me until I did.
Well, I’m happy to report that the nest isn’t empty, it just has more closet space.
In other words, there are distinct advantages to being the only one at home. And I’m living that, too, so I can tell it to you. If you’re worried or sad about letting your child go, whether it’s to kindergarten or to college or to halfway around the world, it’s going to be all right. Because one day, you’re going to realize that you have a lot more room for your shoes.
And bags.
And sheets, and towels.
And there are other advantages, even delights. When you come back into a room, it will look exactly the way you left it. There won’t be open cabinet doors that need closing, or sticky jelly on the counter that needs cleaning, or a dirty milk glass in the sink, which needs to be put in the dishwasher. No cotton balls saturated with nail polish remover that stink up the bathroom, and no wet towels left on the bed. And no sneakers to trip over in the dark, unless that’s the way you leave yours, which I totally get.
Hello, your life just got a whole lot easier.
Hallelujah!
Even if your kid was neat, and Daughter Francesca was pretty good in this department, they didn’t leave things the way you wanted it. They didn’t do things the way you would have.
My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space Page 16
