Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim

by Lisa Scottoline

  Love recycles.

  I think that real, profound happiness comes only when you stop thinking about yourself. When you raise your sights, and let your thoughts drift skyward. When you stop focusing on mundane things like how you’ll get the cranberry sauce on time or whether you have enough gift cards. When you finally let yourself experience the gratitude, happiness, and peace that wreathe the very air.

  This can be an opportunity for reflection, with the old year ending and a new one beginning, the past becoming the future before our very eyes, seamlessly, smooth as a sip of eggnog.

  I can never have just one, can you?

  Even in troubling times, we can take a few moments to peel back the layers of the everyday and come to understand and appreciate what really matters in life—family and friends.

  Like you.

  I’m so grateful for all of you, and Daughter Francesca feels the same way.

  We’ve been so thrilled to meet many of you on tour for our new book, and to hear from even more of you via email. As you may know, the book is about the mother-daughter relationship, and many of you have been so open in sharing the joys and bumps of your own mother-daughter relationships, and mother-son relationships, too. Fathers have written to us about their daughters, and vice versa, because love covers all the possible permutations, and is all the same, anyway.

  We’re all best friends and occasional enemies, aren’t we?

  Just as love transcends blood ties, it pays no heed to time or space, much less mere geography. So many people can’t be with those they love during the holidays because they’re overseas at war, serving all of us, and to them, we are most grateful.

  They, and their families, are the most unselfish of all.

  Others are merely too far away to visit, like Mother Mary and Brother Frank. They won’t leave South Beach in December, and who can blame them? She hates the snow, and he hates anyplace you can’t wear a muscle shirt.

  Many of you have lost those you love, and feel it more acutely at this time of year. My heart goes out to every one of you, and Francesca and I aren’t immune to that pain, either. But we take comfort in knowing that our love for those missing from our holiday tables never ends.

  It abides, warmly and palpably.

  It can make us smile, even now.

  Human beings have hearts for such a reason. You may forget your car keys, but you will never forget your mother’s smile.

  Memories like those are stored in the soul.

  And so Francesca and I can recall, at any given moment, what my late father Frank would say about something, or even the silly faces he would make at dinner. For example, when he wanted a second helping, he simply lifted his plate, pointed at the serving dish, and grunted.

  It was cuter than it sounds.

  But it was really cute.

  We used to tease him about it, and he’d laugh, because he was the world’s most easygoing person. Nothing really got to him, and I rarely saw him angry. He was a placid, contented man, in a mellow holiday spirit all year round.

  Perhaps there’s a lesson in that, for his daughter, eh?

  I’m Type A, and my father was Type B.

  Come to think of it, he was even calmer, like Type C.

  Maybe that’s Type C, for Christmas?

  Maybe.

  Lesson learned, Dad.

  Happy Holidays, and love, to all.

  You Can Never Buy a Gift for a Mother

  By Lisa

  I cheaped out on Mother Mary for Christmas.

  I didn’t mean to, actually. What really happened was that I gave up. I surrendered. You can’t buy a present for Mother Mary without a fistfight.

  Here’s what happened.

  A month before Christmas, I started asking her what she wanted, but I should have known better. Joking aside, she’s the best and most unselfish mother on the planet. So I know that she doesn’t want me to spend money on her. That she would rather I didn’t worry about her. That she would prefer it if I got gifts for Francesca instead. But when I ask her what she wants for Christmas, she keeps those warm and fuzzy sentiments to herself.

  What she says to me is, “I don’t need anything, I’m half-dead.”

  I cringe. “Ma, I want to get you a gift. I’m going to get you a gift. So it would help me if you told me something you need.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Okay, you don’t have to need it, you could just want it.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Come on, Ma. You must want something.”

  “I want you to not bother getting me a gift!” she says, raising her voice.

  “But I want to bother,” I say, matching her decibel for decibel.

  (Actually, the bother is fighting about buying a gift. Fighting about buying a gift takes more time and trouble than buying a gift. In fact, if I had back all the hours I’d spent fighting with my mother about buying her a gift, I would live 189 years.)

  “I DON’T WANT A GIFT!” she shouts, angry.

  And now I’m angry. “MA, I HAVE TO GET YOU A GIFT! I’LL FEEL GUILTY IF I DON’T GET YOU A GIFT!”

  “THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM, COOKIE. NOT MINE.”

  So you see how it goes. You could say that I should just go out and buy her something nice, and that’s what I do every year. I go to a nice jewelry store and get her a necklace or a bracelet. You have to spend money on your mother or you burn in hell. For the Flying Scottolines, hell, guilt, and shame are all big at Christmas.

  I buy her the jewelry and send it down to Miami, and she calls me every Christmas morning, after she opens her gift. And she feels guilty. She says, “Honey, why did you do this? I told you not to do this! It cost too much!”

  So I console her. “Ma, it didn’t cost that much. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Do you like it? Will you wear it?”

  “I love it, but still, I told you not to,” she answers.

  I know she won’t wear it. She never does. She never uses or wears anything I give her. The necklace will stay in her jewelry box, a guilty reminder of the money her daughter spent on her.

  See? Guilt. That’s the trick at Christmas. The real Christmas gift I give my mother is guilt.

  It’s one size fits all.

  And the price is right.

  But I swear to myself, this Christmas will be different. So last week, I ask Brother Frank what she needs, and he tells me her hearing aids don’t work. I call her instantly. “Ma, you need hearing aids. How about I get you a new pair for Christmas?”

  “No. I don’t need hearing aids.”

  “Yes, you do. They’re broken.”

  “They’re fine.”

  “No, they’re broken. Frank told me. Don’t lie.”

  (This is another gift I give Mother Mary for Christmas. Verbal abuse. Don’t try this at home.)

  “I didn’t lie! Only one is broken!”

  Aha! “Okay, sorry.”

  “So I don’t need new hearing aids! I only need one hearing aid! It’s not a lie!”

  “Okay, okay! So I’ll buy one hearing aid. Which one is broken, right or left?”

  “They won’t sell you one hearing aid,” she says, raising her voice.

  “Yes, they will,” I say.

  “NO, THEY WONT!”

  “YES, THEY WILL!”

  “WRONG!”

  “MA, IT’S THE WORST ECONOMY EVER. THEY’LL SELL THEIR MOTHER IF THEY COULD!”

  (Why this thought pops into my mind is anyone’s guess. Feel free to speculate.)

  “THEY WON’T SELL JUST ONE!”

  “THEN I’LL BUY TWO AND THROW ONE AWAY!”

  So you know where this is going. I bought her one hearing aid for Christmas, which left us both feeling guilty.

  Perfect!

  You can never buy a gift for your mother.

  And oddly, that’s as it should be.

  All best to you and yours, this holiday.

  And Many Happy Returns

  By Francesca

  Wh
oever coined the phrase, “and many happy returns,” never tried online shopping.

  Is there such a thing as a happy return? If I were happy with the item, I’d keep it.

  Nobody has intimacy issues with a great gift.

  But this is a story about giving gifts, not giving them back.

  I love choosing gifts for people, but this year I was under deadline and on a budget, so online shopping seemed like the way to go.

  My mom asked for dog sweaters.

  You could’ve guessed that, right?

  So I fell into the Internet wormhole of online pet boutiques that sell things like a four-poster cat bed and pearls for dogs. Things only a crazy person would buy.

  I wanted all of it.

  But I restrained myself. I had a specific objective: three matching dog sweaters in a natural fiber.

  Not crazy at all.

  I selected my mom’s gift in about a half hour. I obsessed over the dogs’ gifts for days.

  Finally I found a red sweater with a reindeer face on the back. It was adorable, alpaca wool, and had all three sizes in stock. I chose two new harnesses for the big dogs and catnip toys for the cats, including Spunky.

  Click click click. Done!

  Then, undone.

  A week later, I got a call from the company saying the sweaters I ordered were no longer available. Apparently I had chosen the “it” item in canine couture, and it was out of stock.

  This bodes well for the economy.

  But ill for my Christmas plans.

  I’d have to find replacements elsewhere, but my concern was that the rest of the order would go through as scheduled. The customer-service woman assured me nothing had been delayed, and I’d get it all by Christmas.

  So I waited.

  And worried.

  By December 20, only one catnip toy had arrived. That was it. One out of eight items.

  Rudolph had better odds.

  I called customer service again and got voicemail. I left a message. I called every day from December 21 through 23 and never got a person to pick up. Finally on Friday night, I got a chirpy email from the company saying they were closed for the holiday.

  This sparked an artillery of holiday stress. I was incensed. Oh, just so you’re enjoying YOUR holiday while your customers have NOTHING!

  I was going to leave the mother of all voicemails. I’d explain how their website misrepresented their stock, their delivery dates, their quality, and STOLE CHRISTMAS.

  I’d have to wait for an opportunity to slip away from my family to unleash on these scam artists.

  But then my mom and I went to a packed showing of The Descendants.

  George Clooney brings people together.

  Later that night, I went to a lovely dinner with my dad’s family. We had the best time.

  I was brushing my teeth when it hit me—I forgot to leave my voicemail bomb.

  I told myself it was all right, there was still time for hate. I’d write an email—forceful, articulate, sure to win a compensatory discount. I lay awake in bed drafting it in my head.

  Not quite visions of sugarplums.

  But then it was Christmas morning. And after the presents were opened, my mom and I got down to the merry business of cooking together. And soon her best friend Franca arrived, and we all ate dinner with the dogs at our feet.

  By the twenty-sixth my wrath had cooled. Christmas was over. Some of the missing gifts I’d replaced in time, some I hadn’t.

  I was too busy enjoying my family, my friends, and my holiday to be disgruntled.

  A week later, I still haven’t received anything else from the company, but my lesson for the New Year is this:

  Anger, even the righteous kind, isn’t worth missing out on joy. Make time for the things that give and need love, and let the rest slide.

  But when these purchases arrive, I intend to send them right back.

  Now that’s a happy return.

  Happy New Year!

  Controlled Freaks

  By Lisa

  My golden retriever and I are eating food that looks exactly alike. And for almost the same reason.

  This can’t be good.

  But it’s delicious.

  You may remember that last summer, I tried to lower my cholesterol the natural way, without drugs. That meant I had to lose weight, which was when I discovered that my problem is portion control.

  In that I have none.

  Please tell me I’m not alone. I can’t be, because I’ve noticed that more and more food marketing is targeted at people like me, in that pretzels, cookies, and chips now come in 100-calorie packs.

  This shouldn’t work, in principle. If you’re on a diet, you shouldn’t be eating pretzels, cookies, and chips at all, but evidently, human nature is such that if you can cheat a little, you will.

  It doesn’t work with marriage.

  Only with carbohydrates.

  The idea is that it doesn’t matter what the food is, just that there’s 100 calories of it in the bag, and people like me will permit themselves one bag, but stop short of starting another. Because they know that if they open another, they’ll have to eat that one, too.

  I admit, I exploit this fact of human nature, for my books. If I can write something at the end of a chapter that will make a reader start the next chapter, I know their natural inclination will be to read another whole chapter. This is a leftover from our Calvinist notion that you finish what you start, which is great as applied to books, but not as applied to pizza.

  Case in point, when I was little, Mother Mary never asked me if I was full. She asked: “Did you make it all gone?”

  The answer was, of course, and I still do. And now my waist is all gone.

  So in a quest to have my portions controlled for me, I found a product called Morningstar Farms sausage patties. The good news is that they come two to a package, have only 150 calories, and no cholesterol. The bad news is they look like hockey pucks.

  They’re not real sausages, and that’s fine with me. Most pigs are smarter than I am, so I don’t mind not eating one. And the patties taste great, though I don’t know what’s in them and don’t really care.

  Anyway, every morning for three months, I ate two fake sausages with two egg whites. And at night I ate Bocaburgers, black bean burgers, or veggie burgers, which also look like hockey pucks.

  I lost weight, though I didn’t lower my cholesterol.

  And I felt sure I could ice skate.

  Now switch gears to Penny the golden retriever, who’s getting older and fatter, and the vet said she needed to lose weight. I went to the pet store and told them my problem.

  I mean, Penny’s problem. I said to the salesman, “I have an old dog who needs to be on a diet, but she has no portion control.”

  He handed me a red bag. “Then feed her this. It’s beef patties, but raw.”

  So I bought the dog food, brought it home, and took two patties out of the bag. They’re round, flat, and brown, and they look like hockey pucks. If you put them on a plate next to my fake-sausage patties, you could easily mistake the dog food for the people food.

  Or think you had invited the Flyers to dinner.

  And like the fake-sausage patties, I have no idea what’s in the beef patties. It says they’re raw, freeze-dried beef, but I don’t understand why they don’t leave grease or blood all over on my hands. I only know that every day, twice a day, I cut up hockey pucks for Penny, then I cut up hockey pucks for me, and we both enjoy our portion-controlled, vaguely food-like meals.

  Who said you can teach an old dog new tricks?

  Dating at the Speed Limit, or the Bad News

  By Lisa

  I have good news and bad news about my dating life. First, the bad news. Dating at fifty is exactly the same as dating at fifteen.

  Except for the braces.

  Yes, I had braces at fifteen, and I’m dating again. I don’t know which is worse.

  I mean, better.

  My friends tell me to h
ave a positive attitude. Take my characteristic upbeat approach. Flip it. In other words, if I hate dating, I have to start liking it.

  Presto-chango.

  But dating might be the only case where flipping it doesn’t work, especially if you’re middle-aged. For example, if you touch knees under the table, they’re replacement knees.

  If you feel titanium pressing against you, it really is titanium.

  And when a man tells you to sit on his good side, he means the side on which he hears better, not the side on which he looks better.

  And hearing’s not the only thing going south. I had a first date with a man who told me that he’d need an hour’s notice if he was going to be “staying over.”

  You can guess why.

  I told him he wasn’t staying over.

  (And switch to Cialis.)

  I don’t go out that much, and every time I do go out, it reminds me of why I don’t. Dating hasn’t changed at all, but I have.

  After two divorces, I’ve lost the completely starry-eyed hope that love conquers all. I know that love isn’t enough.

  Love is just a good start.

  And of course, I believe in love and all that blah blah, but the truth is, it’s different now. I hope it can be better, but I have yet to fall in love again.

  Stay tuned.

  But don’t hold your breath.

  Because I am.

  Here’s what I mean. Now, if I’m on a dinner date, I listen for the red flags. I missed so many before, I’m determined not to do that again, so on the date, I’m waiting for the guy to eliminate himself, like waiting for the love shoe to drop.

  I’m not having a conversation, I’m evaluating one. My date thinks we’re talking, but I’m watching him skip through a minefield, set to explode as soon as he steps a foot wrong. For example, I was recently on a first date with a perfectly nice guy, until he referred to his ex-wife as a bitch.

  Ka-boom!

  All I heard was an explosion.

  If he still hates his ex, he’s out. I know this sounds hypocritical, because I’m not a huge fan of my own exes. But I call them Thing One and Thing Two, not worse. I’m out of love with them, and equally importantly, I’m out of hate.

  By the way, if he still loves his ex-wife, he’s out, too. This came up on another first date, when the guy kept referring to his “wife and kids.”