"What razor?"

"You know, the razor you shave with in the shower."

She blinked behind her bifocals. "I don"t shave."

I didn"t understand. "How can you not shave, like your armpits or your legs?"

"I don"t have hair anymore."

I tried to hold the car steady. Luckily we were almost at the airport. "What happened your hair?"

"It went away."

"What? It disappeared?"

"Yeah. It"s gone."

I felt appalled. I had no idea. Was I going to lose all my leg hair, too? n.o.body told me, which is why I"m telling you. I needed more information, for both of us. "When did it go?"

She shrugged.

"Was it recently?"

"I don"t know and I don"t care."

We both fell quiet a minute, and the only sound was the thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa of the windshield wipers. I worried that I"d made her self-conscious. of the windshield wipers. I worried that I"d made her self-conscious.

"Well, was it before the colander broke or after?" I asked, and we both laughed.

We reached the airport, where I parked and walked her to the gate, having successfully convinced the ticket agent that she gets confused in airports and needed to be escorted. We stopped by the gift shop, where she got two puzzle books and a bottle of water. They sold only the large bottles, which she struggled to hold in her gnarled fingers. We made our way to the gate and took our seats, her with her bottle and books on her lap, waiting for the plane and watching the babies go by. We thought every one was cute, but none cuter than Francesca when she was little. This is a conversation I never tire of, and the only person I can have it with is my mother, who was the first one at the child"s ba.s.sinet twenty-odd years ago.

I gave her a nudge. "Ma, you know, Francesca throws her razor away every four uses."

Mother frowned. "Why?"

"The magazine says you"re supposed to, now. After three times."

"Throw away a perfectly good razor?"

"Yes. It gets dull."

"What magazine says that?"

"I don"t know."

"I do. A crazy magazine."

I thought about that a minute. About being old enough that all your hair has fallen out and you can barely hold the water bottle and you need help just to find the plane because all the announcements are incomprehensible in both English and Spanish, and the airlines love to play musical gates. About the fact that she had lived through a Depression, a world war, and the death of each and every one of her eighteen brothers and sisters, which is not a misprint. She was the youngest of nineteen children, three of whom died of the flu during their childhood, right here in America. Leaving only her, the youngest.

And she is still here.

The sole survivor.

Strong and on her feet, with all of her marbles. She lives in a world that changed from colanders that never break to razors that get tossed after only a week. She expects things not to break because she has not, after all.

She alone remains.

Unbreakable.

Mirror, Mirror

There"s things I won"t spend money on and things I will. For example, I spend money on pretentious clothes for book tour, and that"s fine with me. I earn the money and I never judge people"s spending habits, especially my own.

I learned this lesson when I met a man who had spent several thousand dollars on toy trains. You couldn"t pay me to spend money on toy trains, but that"s me. I could see it made him happy, which makes absolute sense, because he"s not me. Turns out that money can buy happiness, if it runs on a miniature track past tiny fake shrubbery, and who am I to judge? Now, when I buy shoes, I think, at least I"m not blowing money on little model boxcars, for G.o.d"s sake.

That would be really stupid.

To return to topic, here"s what I don"t spend money on: My skin.

I wash my face with a three-dollar jug of Cetaphil that I buy at Walgreen"s. If I"m feeling fancy, which I never am, I buy whatever drugstore moisturizer they"re marketing for old broads. You know the one. They call it age-defying or age-defining or some other euphemism, but we weren"t born yesterday, and we all know what it is-the menopausal moisturizer.

I"m thinking that the world divides into two groups: women who buy their skin-care products at CVS and those who buy them at the mall, which is where today"s adventure starts in earnest.

I"m with daughter Francesca, standing at one of the nicest makeup counters at the mall, which also has a skin care line. Oddly, for the past few years, I"ve been getting free samples of this skin care line sent to me in the mail. I have no idea who sends them to me, whether it"s the department store, the Skin Care G.o.ds, or someone who has seen me on the street and been secretly revolted by my skin. But they"ve been sending me these products for a long time, and I"ve been giving them to Francesca. She"d told me that she liked them, and if I cared enough I would have found out why, but it"s probably the one conversation we didn"t have, until I found myself on the paying side of the glistening counter, listening to a gorgeous salesgirl with the most perfect skin ever describe how they put diamond dust in the face wash.

"Did you say diamonds?" I asked. If I had a hearing aid, I would have checked the battery.

"Yes, the dust exfoliates the skin."

"With diamonds diamonds?"

"Yes, and you have to make sure you wash it all off, or your face will be sparkly."

"Like a stripper?" I asked, and Francesca added: "The richest stripper in the world."

Then we listened to the rest of the pitch, and in five minutes, I felt myself mesmerized by the salesgirl, or maybe by her skin. Her pores shimmered like precious gems, never mind that she was twenty years old, which means that she wasn"t a salesgirl, but a saleschild.

Then she showed us a toner, which I had always thought was something you put in your computer printer but was actually applied to the face after diamond-exfoliating, and she also helped me understand that I needed both a day cream and a night cream, though I had never before thought about face cream having a time limit, which shows what a complete rube I"ve been. was something you put in your computer printer but was actually applied to the face after diamond-exfoliating, and she also helped me understand that I needed both a day cream and a night cream, though I had never before thought about face cream having a time limit, which shows what a complete rube I"ve been.

She asked, "Do you ladies have an eye cream?"

Francesca had the right answer, which was yes, but only because she had cheated and had gotten the free sample, which I must have been insane to give to her, as my eyes now clearly thirsted for their cream. I wondered if there were special creams for other things on your face, like lip or nose cream, but I was too spellbound to ask.

The saleschild turned again to me. "Which serum do you use?"

"Serum?" My mind flipped ahead to the possibilities. Truth serum? Serum cholesterol? Huh?

"There comes a time when every women needs a serum." The saleschild held up a tiny green bottle from which she extracted a medicine dropper. "Now, hold out your hand."

"Yes, master." I obeyed, and she let fall a perfect teardrop of serum onto the back of my hand, leaving a costly wet spot that dried sooner than you can say, Charge it!

"The infusion is absorbed instantly into the skin, leaving it revived and refreshed."

"Like a magic potion," I said, awed, when I felt Francesca"s strong and sensible hand on my arm.

"Mom, we should go."

But I could only hear her as if from far away. I had slipped over to the dark side, and by the time we left the mall, I had a shopping bag full of bottles and tubes, jars and gels.

In other words, toy trains.

Disastrous

I don"t know what kind of conversations you had around your dinner table growing up, but ours were generally about disasters. Mother Mary could make a disaster out of anything. Our kitchen was an accident waiting to happen. I reprint below her most important warnings, in case you"re sitting in your breakfast nook, blissfully unaware.

If you put too much spaghetti on your fork, you"ll choke to death. If you don"t chew your spaghetti twenty times, you"ll choke to death. If you talk while you"re eating spaghetti, you"ll choke to death. Bottom line, spaghetti leads to perdition.

Spaghetti isn"t the only killer. If you load the knives into the dishwasher with the pointy tip up, you"ll fall on them and impale yourself. Also you"ll go blind from reading without enough light. Reading in general ruins your eyes. If you eat baked beans from a can that has dents, you"ll die of botulism. This was before people injected botulism into their faces. Nowadays, the dented can will kill you, but you"ll look young.

You should know that electrocution, a go-to Scottoline hazard, will result from many common household items. You"ll be electrocuted if you use the phone during a thunderstorm. If your nighttime gla.s.s of water spills onto your electric alarm clock, you"ll fry in your sleep. In fact, any small electrical appliance, given the chance, will leap into the nearest sink to kill you. Trust me, blow dryers lie in wait. Your toaster has murder on its mind. given the chance, will leap into the nearest sink to kill you. Trust me, blow dryers lie in wait. Your toaster has murder on its mind.

A closely related disaster is fire, and almost anything can start a five-alarmer. Birthday candles. Lightning striking the house or the car. The stove left on. A cigarette b.u.t.t tossed unpinched into the trash. Oddly, n.o.body in my house worried about smoking. If you smoke, you"ll be fine.

Exercise is lethal. If you play a sport, the ball will hit you in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, presumably deflating them. You"re a goner if you run with scissors or sharpened pencils. Swimming less than an hour after you eat is out of the question, but if you want to play it safe, better to wait until tomorrow. And if you don"t listen and sink like a stone, don"t come crying to me.

It"s your funeral.

As a result of my valuable childhood preparedness training, I"m the lady stockpiling milk, eggs, bread, rock salt, and snow shovels before a storm. And during the anthrax scare, I was first in line at the hardware store. I bought the requisite cord of Saran Wrap and a gross of duct tape, with which to seal the house, and all of it sits in my bas.e.m.e.nt, at the ready. The deadly cloud of anthrax never came, and for that you have me to thank. I pre-empted it. I scared anthrax. I had enough Saran Wrap to protect all of us, if not keep us fresh for days.

Now that you know how prepared I am, you can imagine my dismay when I read something recently reiterating that all manner of disasters could happen-wildfires, hurricanes, and tornados-and I should go online to test my "readiness quotient" (RQ).

Uh-oh.

I"m terrified to report that even though I unplug my blow dryer after each use and load my knives correctly, my RQ score was a 0 out of 10. dryer after each use and load my knives correctly, my RQ score was a 0 out of 10.

I knew I should have studied.

The report said that the average RQ score for Americans is 4, and that only two other people in my zip code had taken the test. Here"s where I went wrong, so you can learn from my mistakes: Not only did I not know how to find the emergency broadcast system on my radio, I couldn"t even find my radio.

I don"t have a disaster supply kit, and duct tape doesn"t count.

I don"t have a "Go" kit. I have only a "Stay Home And Wait It Out" kit.

I don"t have a "family communications plan." Honestly, who does? Communications are hard enough, but family communications are impossible. You have a better chance of surviving a tornado than communicating with your family.

In event of a disaster, I haven"t established a specific meeting place, but that"s easy to choose. The mall.

I don"t drill my family on what to do in an emergency. Scream Hysterically was not an option. Nor was Hurry Back To The Mall.

Nor do I know first aid. Evidently, a box of a.s.sorted Band-Aids, even the kind with the antibiotic, isn"t enough. This surprises me. When the earthquake hits, my money"s on Neosporin.

So you know where this is going. I suggest you log on to www.whatsyourrq.org, test yourself, and get your act together before the apocalypse.

See you at the hardware store. I"ll be the one in the gas mask.

In a gas mask, I look young.

Dog Days

Because I lectured you in my commencement speech to slow down and savor the moments of your life, I thought you should know I"m doing nothing like that.

I flunk savoring.

I know it"s the drowsy dog days of summer and I"m supposed to enjoy sitting around watching the tomatoes ripen and noticing the particular hue of the sunlight as it hits the leafy trees and blah blah blah. Summer sounds like literary fiction, but I write books with car chases.

In other words, I got a new summer project.

Let"s see if you can guess what it is. It involves wood, nails, and feathers.

Give up?

A chicken coop.

With chickens.

Here"s how it happened. You know how I am about home decorating, and I just finished with the house, to mixed results. The good news is that the aluminum siding is gone, the stonework looks fantastic, and the clapboard is fresh Bavarian Cream.

The bad news is that the shutters are painted a bright yellow called Candleglow, which is a misnomer. This color is Solar Energy. This color could power a small city. A tactful friend of mine called it "sunny," but sunny doesn"t come close. If you broke off a piece of the sun itself and stuck it on either side of your windows, you would still only have half of this color. Now you need sungla.s.ses to look at my house, and when you do, you understand instantly why yellow was Vincent Van Gogh"s favorite color. mine called it "sunny," but sunny doesn"t come close. If you broke off a piece of the sun itself and stuck it on either side of your windows, you would still only have half of this color. Now you need sungla.s.ses to look at my house, and when you do, you understand instantly why yellow was Vincent Van Gogh"s favorite color.

Because he was crazy.

Look at my shutters and you not only want to cut your ears off, you want to gouge your eyes out. But you couldn"t, because you"d be blinded by the color. Your face might even melt off, too. It"s like Atomic Blast Yellow, and you get the idea. It"s a man-made disaster.

Correction. Woman-made, even better.

I"m trying to live with it, until I get the money to repaint or detonate.