He agreed, and he likes dandelions, too.

So I can"t decide if this is a boy/girl thing or not. I"m curious about what you think.

And I wonder what this means for b.u.t.tercups.

Graduation Day

Daughter Francesca is graduating from college, and I spent the last hour trying to figure out her school"s incredibly complicated commencement schedule. According to the website, there are three separate commencement exercises, and the main one will be attended by "approximately 32,000 people." The gates open at 6:45 A.M A.M., and not everyone will get a seat, so the website advises me to get there in advance.

Ya think?

And how exactly do you play musical chairs with a small city?

And how early should I get there-1986?

Nor does the website advise how to wake up my 83-year-old mother at that hour, much less provide her with the requisite coffee and apple fritter from Dunkin" Donuts. Our fancy hotel doesn"t serve breakfast until 6:00 A.M A.M. and it offers items like steel-cut oatmeal imported from Ireland and omelets with organic eggs. The website doesn"t seem to understand that if you try to sell my mother a $30 breakfast, she will throw it at you.

The website also states that the commencement exercises will be held outside, but neither does it state how to get my mother to walk on gra.s.s, which she regards as exercise and therefore against her religion. Nor can the website conceive of how slowly Mother Mary walks. The hotel is only three blocks away, but she will have to leave two days prior to make it by dawn. how slowly Mother Mary walks. The hotel is only three blocks away, but she will have to leave two days prior to make it by dawn.

The solution would be for her to skip the first graduation ceremony and attend only the second ceremony, which will be smaller, attended by only ten thousand people. But the website gives no clue as to how to find her in a crowd that size, as she is only four foot eleven inches tall and the oldest member of the Lollipop Guild.

She"d stand out if she wore her lab coat, but then she could end up at the medical school graduation.

In theory, brother Frank could escort her to the second ceremony, but that would require him to find me in a warren of colonial brick dorms, all of which look alike and are badly signed, the better to keep out the unwashed. Like the Scot-tolines, until Francesca got in.

The other possibility is that my mother goes to the third graduation ceremony, to which alumni and bigwigs are invited because that"s where the celebrity intellectual is speaking. The only problem is, the third ceremony has nothing to do with my daughter, and to us, she"s the celebrity intellectual.

The fourth option is that my mother waits in the hotel and watches all three ceremonies on the local cable TV, but for that she could have stayed in Miami and not missed her personal marathon of Law & Order Law & Order.

So I"m confused.

I need an advanced degree to figure out how to deal with college graduation. Or maybe a chart with color-coded highlighting or a map with flag pins. But maybe all this confusion is good, because it distracts me from the larger topic-that my daughter is graduating from college.

Of course it"s an enormously happy occasion, and it goes without saying that I"m proud of her. It doesn"t go without saying without saying that I"m proud of her. It doesn"t go without saying to to her. I tell her how proud I am at least three times a day and I think every kid needs to hear it, even big girls in caps and gowns. But what I mean is that while I"m so happy with the fact that she"s graduating, we haven"t had a chance yet to talk about where she"s going to live until she finds a job. You know my answer: her. I tell her how proud I am at least three times a day and I think every kid needs to hear it, even big girls in caps and gowns. But what I mean is that while I"m so happy with the fact that she"s graduating, we haven"t had a chance yet to talk about where she"s going to live until she finds a job. You know my answer: Home.

Or better yet, in a convent.

Now that college is over, it seems only right that she should move home and get back into her diapers.

I mean, that was the deal, right?

I let my kid go to college, now she should come home. It"s only fair, even though I have enjoyed being an empty nester, and it seems like only yesterday I wrote about missing her. Well, I do, and now I want her back. When I told this to a friend of mine, she told me a joke: What"s the difference between an Italian mother and a Rottweiler?

The Rottweiler eventually lets go.

So college graduation is good news and bad news. The good news is that my kid is healthy, happy, and now, well-educated. And the bad news is that her life is beginning, without me in earnest, so that boo-hoo-my-kid-is-going-to-college was only a step in the separation that began when they cut the umbilical cord.

That was my first mistake. I should have stopped them, right there. In my view, it was medical malpractice.

And after the initial snip, the separation proceeded incrementally to first step, then first date, first car, and first degree. She"s beginning her life as an adult, on her own.

I guess they call it commencement for a reason.

And so we will attend, our raggedy and irregular little family, there to bear witness at this awesome event. I can picture it now. The golden girl we all raised, beautiful in cap and billowing gown. We will bring roses too c.u.mbersome to hold. We will shift on hard wooden chairs. Mother Mary won"t be able to hear or see anything, yet she will weep. We all will. It will be an estrogen fest. Thank G.o.d that brother Frank is gay, so he can join in.

And back at the hotel, Ruby The Corgi will be ordering the imported oatmeal.

Nothing but the best, on this very, very special day.

Congratulations, Francesca.

We"re proud of you.

Trouble in Paradise

Mother Mary and brother Frank were getting ready to fly up for daughter Francesca"s graduation when trouble broke out in Miami. It began when I got a text from Frank, which read: CALL ME ASAP ABOUT MOM.

I freak out. Mother Mary isn"t in the best of health, and Frank never texts me. I grab the phone and speed-dial him. "What"s the matter? Is she okay?"

"It"s really bad." He sounds upset, and my heart pounds in my chest.

"What happened?"

"I got a tattoo."

Huh? "And she had a heart attack?"

"No, she won"t speak to me. She won"t even look at me. She turns her head when I go to kiss her cheek."

My blood pressure returns to normal, though I still don"t understand. "This is what you texted me about? This is nothing!"

"Really? You try living with her."

An excellent point. The two of them battling in their little house gives new meaning to cage fighting. I say, "But you already have two tattoos. Why is she so upset?"

"I don"t know."

"What"s the tattoo look like?"

"It"s red roses under a sentence."

"What"s the sentence?"

"ONLY G.o.d CAN JUDGE ME."

I can"t help but laugh. "This is ironic. Doesn"t Mom realize she"s judging you?"

"It"s not funny. Do something."

"I"m on it." I hang up and speed-dial my mother. When she answers, I cut the small talk. "Mom, he"s 51 years old. If he wants a tattoo, he can have a tattoo."

"It"s ugly."

"So what? He"s upset."

"So am I."

"Why can"t you just let it go?"

"No."

"But it"s ironic, isn"t it? I mean, his tattoo should say, ONLY MOM CAN JUDGE ME."

"I don"t get it."

I don"t explain. Evidently, irony doesn"t come easily to The Flying Scottolines. We"re too literal, or maybe insane.

Mother continues, "I don"t know why your brother has to be this way. What"s the matter with him? What did I do to deserve this? Why is he like this? Was he born this way?" She then throws the kind of fit that other parents throw when they find out their kid is gay. But that, she had no problem with.

Ironic, no?

She was fine with it from day one, when Frank told us that his friend Arthur was really his boyfriend. She even invited Arthur to move in with us, and she was happy to make extra meatb.a.l.l.s for dinner. Now Arthur is gone and she lives with Frank in South Beach, where the two of them have a social circle of moms, gay sons, and meatb.a.l.l.s. Their house smells like gravy and aftershave. meatb.a.l.l.s for dinner. Now Arthur is gone and she lives with Frank in South Beach, where the two of them have a social circle of moms, gay sons, and meatb.a.l.l.s. Their house smells like gravy and aftershave.

"Mom, you have to make up with him. Francesca"s graduation is coming up."

"I won"t speak to him there, either."

"You have to. You"ll be sitting with him."

"No. You sit between us."

I try to argue with her, but I get nowhere. When my mother sets her jaw, she"s an Italian Mount Rushmore. I cannot imagine them flying from Miami together, side-by-side, then going through the entire three days in Boston not speaking to each other.

Actually, I can, which is worse.

I have to prevent it, but I have only one weapon.

Guilt.

I choose my next words carefully. I don"t want to give her a heart attack. My brother and I have been worried about giving my mother a heart attack ever since we woke her up too loudly and she told us we could give her a heart attack. I"m telling you now, if my mother gets a heart attack, it"s my fault.

"Mom, think about it this way. None of us knows what will happen in life. What if something happened to you, or Frank?"

(By the way, I say this as if these two events are equally likely. To suggest otherwise would be tactless. Also I didn"t want to give her a heart attack.) "Mom, do you want your son"s last memory to be that you wouldn"t speak to him? Or your last memory of him to be that you wouldn"t give him a kiss?"

"G.o.d forbid."

"Exactly."

"Make the call."

She hung up. She was already on it.

And the last I heard, they were having meatb.a.l.l.s.

Commencement Day

Recently I had the great thrill of receiving an honorary degree, so I stayed up all night before, drafting a speech for commencement day. I tried to write something meaningful and profound, because you can"t joke around in a commencement speech. It calls for loftier sentiments, and though I"m not incapable of same, I love to get laughs.

I was aiming for meaningful laughs.

In other words, every draft came out terrible.

I was up until dawn, fussing over 1500 words, which is crazy. It should have been easy. I can sneeze 1500 words. But go-out-and-change-the-world stuff doesn"t come naturally to me. I hate to put that kind of pressure on people. Why isn"t it good enough to live a decent life? For me, it is. If I can parallel park, I"m doing good.

Also, I was getting bollixed up by the fact that I had heard J. K. Rowling deliver the best commencement speech ever, and she outsells me 8,376,373,838 books to one. So I was having a major case of performance anxiety by the morning, even after I had drafted a generic go-change-the-world speech. I went downstairs to make a pot of coffee and a white light bulb went off in my head.

Literally.

And not in a good way.

There was a white flash of light, but no idea came to me. I blinked again, and my eyes didn"t seem to clear. All I could see were bright prisms of colors, like looking out of a kaleidoscope.

I covered one eye and then the other, but all I could see were fragmented rainbows. I thought I was imagining it and went to look in the mirror, where I saw my own eyes staring back from wacky shards of color.

I had become a Cubist painting.

It wasn"t a good look, for a single girl.

I went back up to the computer, logged into WebMD, and read through my colorful prisms, learning the symptoms of the various eye diseases. I determined that I didn"t have macular degeneration or a detached retina, but the kaleidoscopes weren"t clearing. I remained calm because there weren"t a lot of other choices. Forty-five colorful minutes later, I was considering driving to the emergency room, through what would undoubtedly look like a psychedelic tunnel.

But the whole time I was thinking, what if I went blind? If I had a choice, which sense would I give up?

Sight would not be my first choice, though I have come to meet many wonderful people who have coped so well with their blindness. I"m also partial to smelling things, like lilacs and spaghetti sauce, which I love, or dog breath, which I love even more. And I"ve gotten used to hearing things, though I"d give up the sense of taste in a minute. Then everything would taste like tofu, and I"d lose weight.

But seriously, what would it be like if something I had taken for granted, like my eyesight, was suddenly taken away?