Chick Wit

• Classic Column: Bizarro Birthdays May 31, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I just got off the phone with Mother Mary, who’s lost her mind.  Or maybe it’s Scottoline birthday madness.

  Let me explain.

  She told me a story that happened to her that day, when she was going outside to do the laundry.

  Yes, you read that right.

  She lives in Miami with brother Frank and she goes outside to do the laundry because they keep their washer and dryer in the backyard.

  This makes no sense to me, but she swears that it’s common in Florida to keep major appliances in the backyard, like shrubs with twenty-year warranties.  

  Still, it’s hard for me to believe.  I suspect that my mother and brother are redneck Italians.

  But never mind, that’s not the point of the story.

  So Mother Mary is going outside to put in a load of laundry and she sees one of her neighbors, a nice young woman, walking her two-year-old son by the hand.  My mother stops to say hello, and the little boy looks up at her with big blue eyes and says:

  “I love you, Mary.”

  So of course my mother melts, because she loves kids, and she even gets choked up telling me on the phone.  The whole story is sounding really sweet until she gets to the next part, which is when she asks the mother of the toddler when is his birthday, and the woman answers:

  November 23.  

  Okay, means nothing to you, but that’s brother Frank’s birthday.  

  And on the phone, my mother tells me:  “I looked at that little boy, and I thought he was like Frank.  Like he has your brother’s soul.”

  I thought I heard her wrong.  “Pardon?”

  “When he said he loved me, I looked into his eyes and I could see his soul, and it was Frank’s soul.”

  “You mean they’re alike?”

  “No, I mean they’re the same.”

  I tried to deal.  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.  I’m telling you, he has the same exact blue eyes as Frank and he was born on the same day.  He has Frank’s soul.”

  “Ma, Frank still has his soul.  He’s not dead yet.”

  “I know that,” she said, irritably.  “They share the same soul.”

  “Ma, that’s crazy.”

  “Sorry, but I know, I can tell.  Remember the earthquake?”

  This shuts me up, temporarily.  It’s matter of public record that Mother Mary was the only person in Miami to feel an earthquake that took place in Tampa, and the South Florida newspapers even dubbed her Earthquake Mary.  Ever since then, she thinks she’s Al Roker, but supernatural.

  She said, “It’s the same soul.  Absolutely.”

  “Ma, just because they have the same birthday doesn’t mean they have the same soul.”

  “Hmph.  What do you know, about birthdays?”

  She was referring to something I’ll never live down, which happened to me over thirty years ago, when daughter Francesca was three years old.  I had taken her in a stroller into an optician’s shop in town, and a man walked through the door, pointed directly at Francesca, and said: “Her birthday is February 6.”

  I was astounded.  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  I went home that day and called my mother.  “Ma, some guy just guessed that Francesca’s birthday is February 6!  Isn’t that amazing?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because her birthday is February 7.”

  I blinked. “It is?”

  “Yes, dummy.”

  Look, I have no idea how it happened, but for the first three years of Francesca’s life, I celebrated her birthday on the wrong day.  

  Sue me.

  Maybe it’s because I was in labor for 349,484 hours, so the exact day she was born seemed like a technicality.  And since then, it was just she and I celebrating a day earlier, with nobody around to know better.

  So now I can never say anything about birthdays, ever.

  But at least I know where everybody’s soul should be.

  And their washer-dryers, too.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Giuseppe Scottoline May 24, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Recently I mentioned that I received an award from International Thriller Writers called the ThrillerMaster, which makes me sound a lot more exciting than I am.

  The award was a lifetime achievement award for writing, and I’m so grateful for it, especially to my readers.

  But I’m not bringing it up to brag, but to tell you about the subject of my acceptance speech – my grandfather Giuseppe Scottoline.

  Giuseppe came to the United States from the town of Ascoli Piceno in Italy’s Le Marche region, which is rural and beautiful. Unfortunately he passed away before I was born, so I never met him. He was only five feet tall, and by all accounts, he was very shy. My grandmother Mary, whom I knew and loved, was taller than her husband.

  And she had no problem speaking her mind.

  Giuseppe, Mary, and a daughter settled in West Philadelphia, where they had two more daughters and a young son who would become my father Frank Scottoline.

  At first, Giuseppe wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in America, and neither did my grandmother. They were intimidated by this big, busy country, and they’d really believed the myth that the streets were paved with gold, which seems incredible.

  The Scottolines are adorably gullible.

  But they stayed, and Giuseppe decided to support his family by mowing lawns, with a push mower.

  You can see the problem with his business plan.

  There’s no grass in West Philadelphia.

  So he pushed his mower to the houses that had lawns, and my father told me it was miles away. Giuseppe mowed lawns all day, then pushed the mower back home.

  And the Scottolines survived.

  What’s remarkable for present purposes is that Giuseppe was completely illiterate. He couldn’t read or write in his own language.

  He even signed his name with an X.

  I know, I’ve seen it. It wasn’t a big X, like an “X marks a spot” on a treasure map, promising untold riches. It was the little x of a shy and silent man, intended not to draw attention to itself or take up too much space.

  And it strikes me as amazing that only two generations later, I received an award for writing books. Me, the granddaughter of an illiterate man.

  And as you may know, my daughter Francesca is a novelist in her own right, with her debut novel nominated for Best First Novel by International Thriller Writers and a paperback title Full Bloom coming out this July.

  What I’m trying to say is that Giuseppe may have been an unassuming man, but he got himself to this amazing country and thereby changed the story of his family.

  His legacy wasn’t millions of dollars, but the hope for something better, which is far more precious.

  It really makes me wonder how we measure lifetime achievement.

  I’ve written fifty books and I’m delighted that I was recognized with an award.

  But where’s the award for people like Giuseppe?

  I imagine all the things people like him did during their lifetimes, the hardships they overcame and the obstacles they persevered through.

  How many times did they think something wonderful was going to happen, only to learn that the streets were hard with asphalt?

  How far did they push their mowers?

  How did they stick it out when times became impossibly difficult, through World War II and the Great Depression? Or even now?

  There are so many people who have achieved so much in their lifetime, survived, and even flourished through so much adversity, but none of them gets recognition.

  I’d love to change the way we think about achievement.

  Giuseppe was a little man.

  But to my mind, he was a giant.

  Copyright © 2026 Lisa Scottoline

• My Wild Life May 17, 2026

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Do you remember Girls Gone Wild?

  Well, at my house, Mother Nature is the girl.

  And my wildlife is going wild.

  We begin with the foxes. 

  You may know that a mother fox and her five kits moved into an old groundhog hole in my backyard.

  They’re adorable! 

  All I do is film them all day long. 

  Next I’ll be making baby books for them.

  But they grew up really fast and now they’re all running around like crazy, popping in and out of the den. 

  Last week I didn’t see them for a day and I worried they left for college. 

  Then they came back, all five kits, with backpacks and girlfriends and everything.

  Now I have six foxes in my backyard, which they call home. 

  Like their den is right outside my den. 

  I was tempted to try to domesticate one because I read that they’re like dogs.

  Hopefully they’re better than Eve/Evil.

  Can you walk a fox?

  But my friends talked me out of it. Everyone’s worried they’ll cause trouble, but it’s the squirrels causing the trouble.

  Let me explain.

  I own a Toyota Tundra, which is a wonderful truck in every way.

  Unfortunately, squirrels like it, too

  Because every year, no matter how much I use the truck, I open the door to find shredded paper all over the front seat. So I follow the pieces to the glove box and when I open it, it’s full of nuts, twigs, and pieces of what used to be the air filter that goes to the cab.

  And I have to pay $700.00 to replace the air filter.

  So this year, I moved the truck to a different location and hoped that the squirrels wouldn’t find it. 

  But they did, the next day.

  I had an entire squirrel family nesting in the engine.

  Honestly it’s nuts.

  And it’s costing me money I’d squirreled away.

  Between the fox den and the squirrel nest, my life is a children’s book.

  Then I started to wonder why squirrels don’t eat the filters in my other cars, which are parked in the same place. 

  So I went online and got my answer.

  Evidently, Toyota lines its air filters in the Tundra with soybean oil, and guess what?

  Squirrels are vegan?

  Who knew?

  Everybody on the online message boards has different suggestions for ways to keep squirrels from eating the filters, like:

  “Hit the recirc button.”

  No. I’d have to find it first.

  “Spray peppermint oil mixed with water.”

  Sorry. Too woo-woo.

  “Remove the wiper arms and cowling, then secure galvanized mesh over the intake gap.”

  No. What?

  The only mesh I care about is pelvic.

  Me, I’m thinking of another solution.

  Not bothering to replace the air filter in my cab.

  I don’t know why I need an air filter in my cab. 

  I don’t know why I need filtered air anywhere.

  What am I filtering out?

  Certainly not squirrels.

  I don’t use the truck often enough to catch whatever contagion is outside the cab. 

  I guess an air filter is like a mask for your car.

  So I’m going commando.

  It’s Nature’s way.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026

• 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