My Dog is Chelsea

It all started last October, when my mother, her boyfriend, my brother, and I were out to celebrate my mother’s birthday. It was a nice restaurant — one that Tim and Nina Zagat would rate well — but like all new joints with an up-and-coming chef, it was dimly lit and just a little too loud.

“Can you see the menu?” asked my mother, holding the decorative candle up to the entree list.

“What?” shouted John, her boyfriend.

“Yes,” I said. “I can.”

Without skipping a beat: “I can’t see the menu!” John complained.

“What?” my mother asked.

My brother and I looked at each other. This would be a tedious meal.

The waiter came by to read the specials, to which John responded, “Are there any specials tonight?” Then, my mother requested a flashlight. The waiter had one in his pocket — he was prepared for the over-fifty crowd — and my mother illuminated her menu to reveal that the restaurant offered a cioppino.

“Oh! I make a great cioppino!” she announced to the waiter. “Is it as good as mine?”

Oh god.

“I don’t know, but it’s pretty delicious,” he said.

She ordered it, and then turned to my brother and I. “Don’t I make a great cioppino?”

I had never even heard of cioppino. “I have no memory of you making any such dish,” I said. My brother concurred.

“What?” asked John.

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Ever since the cioppino experience (which, my mother pointed out to the waiter, was very delicious but not quite as good as hers), my mother has been talking about making a cioppino. It has become almost a weekly conversation: “I was thinking about making dinner tonight. How about a cioppino?” she says, but then decides it’s too finicky and makes some other ridiculously elaborate dish. Tonight, though, we’re having cioppino. Two of my uncles and my grandmother are coming over for dinner, and my mother has been talking all week about this meal. “Uncle Joe borrowed the cioppino recipe once, so I hope he’ll like mine,” she said the other day, which is Mother-speak for “I hope mine is better than his.”She has been talking about this cioppino so much, in fact, that every single night last week she has said, “So, I was thinking about making a cioppino on Saturday.”

By Thursday, I had taken to responding, “Really? I had no idea!” in that sarcastic tone I use very frequently with her.

Except for last night. Last night, I became my mother:

Mother: I’m going grocery shopping tomorrow to pick up the ingredients for dinner.
Me, very earnestly: Oh, what are you making?
Mother: Would you give me a break already?
Me: What?
Mother: Are you serious?
Me: Yes?
Mother: Um, hello! I was thinking about making a cioppino!

We both laughed and I apologized. I certainly give my mother a lot of crap, and I can see that if I have a daughter, when she is my age, she’ll be doing the exact same thing. My mother sometimes says, “Your father once told me, ‘Elaine, you deserve her,’ about you. ‘You deserve her.’” I’ve never really understood what that meant, but I guess I get it now. And I’ll deserve it when I have one of my own.

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Mother: Well, the ciopinno recipe says it serves 8 people, so that should just be enough, since there will be eight of us. Brother: There’s only going to be seven of us. Me: No, there will be eight. Count it. Mother: Yeah, there’s three of us, plus John, plus three of them. That’s eight. Me: Yeah, eight. Brother: You guys are both insane.