Chick Wit

• Classic Column: Mother Mary Had Priorities May 10, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Mother Mary was a great mother.

  But she was not a great housekeeper.

  Guess which mattered more.

  I remember her hugging me.

  I remember her looking over her newspaper to laugh at something I said.

  I remember her telling me I was great.

  I remember her lifting an eyebrow when I was out of line.

  She never yelled at me.

  Her eyebrows did.

  She loved me so much she had to bite me.

  This might be an Italian thing. 

  She would just grab my arm and bite it. 

  She called it a love bite.

  You know what?

  I liked it. 

  I remember it.

  Do you know what I don’t remember? 

  That the house was kind of messy.

  Mother Mary worked, and I was one of the few kids who had a working mom in my class, so I know she was busy.

  But her other priority was carbohydrates.

  Every Sunday, she made homemade pasta and homemade tomato sauce.

  You can’t even imagine how great this was, growing up. 

  As I’ve written before, we had pasta every night. I didn’t even think that was weird. And I had cold spaghetti for breakfast the next day, and even had spaghetti sandwiches for lunch, which I brought into school.

  How do you make a spaghetti sandwich?

  Just take spaghetti and put it between two loaves of Italian bread.

  This would be Italian, squared.

  If people laugh at you, offer them a bite.

  The kids at my lunch table started out laughing and ended up begging.

  Looking back, we had our ups and downs, but what I remember most about my mother is that she loved to laugh.

  She really was the funniest person. I can’t remember any of her jokes now, but the substance of her jokes don’t matter.

  What I remember is she was the beating heart of our family, and there was always a laugh.

  So I learned humor can get you through almost anything.

  And we find ourselves in a really difficult time in our country. 

  Joking around may look insensitive, but it helps.

  The great Mel Brooks had a birthday was this week, and he said, “Humor is a defense against the universe.”

  I think that’s kind of brilliant.

  There are days when it seems like the universe is conspiring to break us down. 

  I know there are a lot of women hurting these days, and ladies, I’m with you. 

  And it’s hard to find the humor in politics, or a pandemic. 

  But humor isn’t heartless.

  It’s a way to take heart.

  This too shall pass.

  And not because we’ll sit by idly, but because we’ll make sure it passes.

  Mother Mary taught me determination, and action. 

  But most importantly she taught me to laugh.

  So forgive me, but here’s a method to my madness, and next week, I’ll write something funny for you. 

  In the meantime, I’ll look around for the things that make me laugh. 

  Like the dogs. 

  This morning Boone woke me up by sitting on my head.

  It’s a dog thing.

  The dogs make me laugh every day. 

  My cat makes me laugh once a year.

  But it’s a good laugh.

  I also have a barn cat who likes to sit on a horse.

  Now that’s funny.

  He also likes to ride around in the mower.

  Too bad he can’t drive.    

  I have a horse who’s so lazy he lies down while I groom him.

  He thinks it’s funny.

  Actually it is.

  And I do it.

  So the joke’s on me.

  And here’s something that’s always funny:

  The cable company.

  The cable company’s always good for a laugh.

  My Internet has gone out three times this week, which of course is the week my next novel is due, and I have gone through four different cable visits, three different modems, and two pounds of pasta, not homemade.

  Humor and carbs. 

  Every time.

  We will get through this, together.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2022

• Take My Advice May 3, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  There have been 3 stages in my life.

  Childhood, divorce, and advice.

  Each one has been terrific.

  Let me explain.

  I had a great childhood.

  My parents adored me, and all I did was go outside and play.

  The only screens were on doors.

  My mother would tell me, “Stop reading, it will ruin your eyes.”

  She was right.

  And wrong.

  There followed two marriages, to Thing One, and Thing Two.

  The good news is that my first marriage produced my amazing daughter Francesca.

  The other good news is that divorce exists.

  The other day I read a news story about a Florida woman who killed both of her ex-husbands in the same day. When the police came to arrest her for murder, she asked, “Which one?”

  Too dark?

  Now we come to the present stage, which is advice.

  I say this now because a nice thing is happening to me this week.

  I’m getting an award from International Thriller Writers called ThrillerMaster, which is basically a lifetime achievement award.

  Wow?

  Who knew?

  I never thought I’d ever even get published and here I am, forty books later.So there are interviews asking me for advice for up-and-coming writers.

  Notice I did not say younger.

  Because one piece of wisdom is that nothing is about age.

  You can write a book at any time.

  In fact, Allen Levi was in his late sixties when he wrote Theo of Golden, the mega-bestseller that was his first book.

  Actually he’s the one we should be asking for advice.

  Anyway what’s happening with me is that the interviewer usually asks, “What is the one piece of advice you would give?”

  And I can’t narrow it down.

  I am full of advice.

  I have so much advice, it’s coming out of my ears.

  I’m not saying it’s all good. 

  It might be bad.

  It’s based on mistakes I made.

  The more mistakes you make, the more advice you have.

  So look on the bright side, when you file for divorce.

  You’re just racking up advice.

  It’s called experience.

  Nowadays we call it lived experience, which I like because I think we don’t pay enough attention to people and what they learn from their lives.

  You shouldn’t need a lifetime achievement award to be asked advice.

  Everyone who’s lived a lifetime can give advice.

  The irony is that as people get older in this culture, we tend to listen to them less, not more.

  Mother’s Day is upon us, and the best advice I ever got was from Mother Mary.

  Like, Be Yourself.

  So maybe on Mother’s Day, take your mom to dinner and ask her for advice.

  She might answer, Eat your vegetables.

  By the way, that’s excellent advice. 

  Nowadays there are diet doctors who sell books about plant-based diets, which is what your mother has been telling you for your whole life, for free.

  And maybe you have some advice too.

  I really think all of us are so thoughtful and have so much more to say than people give us credit for.

  Like Daughter Francesca has given me excellent advice, and much of it I’ve followed. Even little things like, thanks to her, I’m going to the gym now and I started lifting weights.

  Me?

  I have a great trainer who has an array of barbells, ropes, kettleballs, and elastic bands.

  He’s like Felix with his Bag of Tricks.

  And for half an hour, I do whatever he says.

  It’s not a power I’ve ever given to any man before.

  And I don’t intend to make a habit of it, other than my trainer.

  But you know what, I’m learning.

  That’s my best advice of all.

  Keep learning.

  Stay strong.

  Not every weight is a burden.

  And I bet you can lift it if you try.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026

• Classic Column: Mother Mary and the Terrorists April 26, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  They say that the past isn’t even past, and that’s always true when Mother Mary is around.  

  It all begins with a call from Brother Frank.

  “I got bad news,“ he says.  “We’re bastards.”

  “Wha?” asks I.

  “Well, we went to get mom’s driver’s license renewed.”

  So far, I’m following.  Mother Mary doesn’t drive, but she carries an ID card that the Florida DMV issues.  Her last card expired, which I found out on her last visit after I tried to put her on a plane back to Miami.  They wouldn’t let her fly until they patted her down, which she enjoyed way too much.

  “The DMV says we can’t renew her ID card without her marriage certificate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a woman who’s using her married name.”

  “So what?”  I’m trying to understand.  I don’t see what a driver’s license has to do with a marriage certificate, especially at this point in my mother’s life.  My father passed in 2002, and my parents have been divorced for ever.  They were married in 1950, a time when people balanced spinning plates on TV.  Now that’s entertainment.

  “It’s a new law, since September 11^th.” 

  In the background, I hear my mother yelling, “Those terrorists, they should be ashamed of themselves!”

  I nod in approval.  That someone should be ashamed of themselves is the worst thing she says about anyone.  And when she’s really mad, she’ll shout, “Out of my sight!”  I fear for the terrorists if they ever meet Mother Mary.  She’ll order them out of her sight, take off her shoe, and throw it at them.  She always hits her target.  There are missile-launchers with less accuracy.  

  But to say on point, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.  “Frank, can this be true?”

  “Yes.  We were in line behind a 92 year old woman whose husband had been dead for fifty years, and they wouldn’t give her an ID card.  She had taken two buses to get there, so we gave her a ride home.  She said it was a mikveh.”

  I wince.  “You mean a mitzvah, which is a good deed.”

  “What’s a mikveh?”

  “Forget it.  Tell the story.”

  “So we called the hall of records back home, and they can’t find her marriage certificate anywhere.”

  “Do the records go back that far?”

  “Yes, but the certificate is lost.  Or it never existed.”

  I blink.  “It has to exist.  They got married.”

  “Yeah, but they’re’s no proof.”

  Behind him, my mother’s yelling, “It’s all because of the terrorists!”

  I let it go.  “So what now?”

  “She can’t visit you until we straighten this out.”

  Which would be the good news.  

  Just kidding.  

  I ask, “What about a passport?”

  “She needs the ID card.  She’s gonna show a passport to write a check?  And we’re illegitimate.”

  “Does it matter?” I wonder aloud.  In the olden days, they used to call it being born out of wedlock, but I never liked the word wedlock.  It has a faintly incarcerated air, which fits my marital history to a T.  

  “I don’t know if it matters.  It seems like everybody’s illegitimate, these days.  I feel kind of cool.”

  I laugh.  “I know, right?  We’re Brad and Angelina’s twins.”

  “I’ll be the boy.”

  “I’ll be the girl.”

  Mother Mary shouts, “Bastards!” 

  But I don’t ask which ones she means.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Classic Column: Which Spices Would You Take To a Kitchen Island? April 19, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  There’s nothing like home improvement to improve your life.

  At least, not in theory.

  I say this because I’m adding a garden room to my house, even though I don’t even know if that’s a thing, because I have a garden and I want a room in front of it so I can see it through the window.

  Like TV, only without Andy Cohen.

  The garden room is attached to the kitchen and since it needed a door, the oven and cabinets had to be moved, and in any event, you see where this is going.  Adding a garden room meant that the kitchen got remodeled.  Because the thighbone is connected to the leg bone and the leg bone is connected to the wallet.

  Anybody who’s ever started home improvement knows that as soon as you improve one thing, you have to improve other things, so that everything is New and Improved, like detergent, only much more costly.

  But I’m not complaining.

  I feel lucky to be able to make these changes, and since I work at home, I’m spending 24/7 on the premises, I want to premises to suit me.  And while we’re turning that frown upside down, let me add that since I’m still terribly single, it’s great to have everything exactly the way I want.

  Finally.

  And then I’ll die.

  My epitaph will read:

  HERE LIES LISA SCOTTOLINE 

  DID SHE IMPROVE ENOUGH?

  To stay on point, remodeling the kitchen means that I’m starting to look hard at my priorities, namely, spices.  Please tell me that I’m not on the only woman who owns approximately 75,932 spices, accumulated over decades, and that the spices are dusted off every decade, which is the only time they’re even touched.

  I’m looking at you, cardamom.

  How this came about is that when I moved the oven, I lost the shelf above it, which is where I kept the aforementioned spices, and that meant that I had to find the spices a new home or concede the obvious and throw them out.

  So I began to cast a skeptical eye at my spice rack.

  And it took me on a tour of my own life.

  Let’s begin with Marriage Rookie Enthusiasm.  

  In that time period of my life, I had just married Thing Two, my daughter Francesca was young and I had two stepdaughters living at home.  I wanted to be not only the best mother of all time, but also the best stepmother, so I instantly bought American Mom spices, which you use when you bake apple pie.  You know the autumnal array of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

  To make a long story short, I made exactly one apple pie. 

  Divorce ensued, but I got custody of the spices.

  Then it was just Francesca and me, and being Italian-American, I decided that I was going to make homemade tomato sauce, or gravy.  Mother Mary made the best gravy ever, but she refused to give me the recipe because I was a lawyer.

  Don’t ask.

  I watched her do it and she always used onion salt, garlic salt, salt salt, and extra salt.

  No fresh spices were involved.

  Yet it was delicious. 

  Still I could never make gravy as good as she did, and in time I gave up, though I still have the garlic salt.  I feel certain that Mother Mary approves, smiling down from heaven and hoping that the garlic salt has solidified into a sodium bullet.

  The next stage of my spice life was Francesca going to college, and that was when I decided I wasn’t going to act mopey because I was an empty nester, and believe me, I got over that fast.

  LOL.

  But in spice terms, that was the time of my Indian Awakening, an idea I got from a Williams Sonoma catalog.  I bought every Indian spice known to man, extending well beyond starter curry into garam masala, turmeric, and vadouvan.  They came in round pots full of orange and yellow powders, like nightmare blusher.

  These were the coolest spices ever, but I never looked at them again because as an empty nester, I stopped cooking altogether.

  Which was coolest of all.

  This brings us to the present day, when the only spices I use are salt and pepper.

  They require neither shelf, rack, nor cabinet.

  They’re sitting alone together on the kitchen island, like survivors of a suburban shipwreck.

  Where they’ll stay until the next Williams Sonoma catalog comes in the mail.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Puppy Envy April 12, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I’ve been dog-sitting Daughter Francesca’s dog Bobby.

  And it’s created a problem.

  Because I like Bobby better than my dog Eve.

  Just kidding.

  Kinda.

  Let me explain.

  Bobby and Eve are Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, a tri-color and a Blenheim respectively, and they’re both about a year and a half years old. Francesca and I are besties, so the dogs are besties, and they love playing together.

  But this last visit, I could see that Bobby is the model child.

  Guess who’s the problem child.

  Eve/Evil.

  Bobby is personality plus. He’s always in a great mood, he’s friendly to other people and dogs, and he loves to cuddle.

  I mean, really cuddle.

  Anytime I sit down, he sits right beside me.

  If I stretch out on the floor to read or watch TV, he comes over and rests his head on my shoulder.

  When I go to sleep at night, he cuddles on my pillow or sleeps with his neck on mine.

  I know that sounds crazy, but I love it.

  In winter, my neck was nice and toasty.

  And I could feel his little heartbeat.

  I slept better than ever, like he was furry Ambien.

  In contrast, Eve always sleeps at the foot of the bed.

  I pull her up to get her to sleep near me, but she won’t have any.

  She likes lying on my feet, which means I can’t move.

  And she barks to wake me up at 6:00 in the morning.

  Meanwhile I don’t have to get up until 7:30.

  I am my own boss.

  My office is downstairs.

  When Eve barks that early, Bobby will lazily open one eye. He’s in no hurry to leave our pillow paradise, either.

  Then he’ll lick my face, endlessly.

  Yes, we make out.

  He’s my Employee of the Month.

  He deserves a bonus — or a bone.

  Honestly, this is my kind of dog.

  Only he’s not my dog.

  By the way, Eve chews rugs, furniture, and wooden baseboards.

  Bobby chews nothing but food.

  His only bad habit is that he will find a sneaker, carry it around, and hide it somewhere. It takes a while for me to find both sneakers.

  Do I mind?

  No, it’s fun!

  Eve and Bobby are the Goofus and Gallant of dogs.

  The dogs are from the same breeder, who told us, “female dogs love you, but male dogs fall in love with you.”

  Before, I thought that sounded gendered.

  And I worried that Eve was getting the bitch edit, literally.

  But it’s true, of these two.

  In the end, one is sugar and one is spice.

  But if I could, would I trade Eve for Bobby?

  Not really.

  Eve is my sassy, spicy, bossy little girl.

  She might even be me in dog form.

  Adorable!

  Just in her own way.

  Copyright © 2026 Lisa Scottoline