Chick Wit: Growing up, glad to give back

As you know, this month I am on tour for my new book, "Look Again," so I asked daughter Francesca to help me out with the column, among other things.

When I was in high school, my mother's book tour meant that I had the house to myself, and I would spend the month eating a lot of spaghetti and Top Ramen noodles (cooking = boiling water), staying up late watching cable TV (swear words! edgy!), and cursing myself for not having the guts (or the contacts) to throw a totally sick house party. Instead, I was one of the kids who had her first sip of beer from my grandmother's Bud Light at 10 years old and then not again until college.

I know. Lame.

Well, now I'm at the pinnacle of hip, young adulthood - I can order my own Bud Light, and I'm living in the Big City, single mother to the cutest baby I know, my dog, Pip. I have a nice little routine - I work out at the local gym, I go to work, I walk the dog, I cook food that my roommate reluctantly but kindly eats, I get dressed up on the weekend in hopes of something exciting happening. Being a grown-up is easy!

But that's all about to change. I'm getting a new addition to my tiny family. And it was unplanned.

Little Tony is staying with me during my mother's book tour.

You know Tony from past columns or even from his guest appearances at local signings. Tony is the puppy my mother got just a few months after I got Pip. She and I are like the puppy version of Sarah and Bristol Palin: a mother-daughter team raising newborns at the same time. Listen, you can't plan these things, not around national book tours and not around presidential elections.

Every puppy is a blessing.

Just not my blessing.

See, there was a delicate balance to my life - one girl: one dog. This was enough to impress my friends, the way I blew right through the house-plant stage and into the house-pet one (23-year-olds are easily impressed). But now, suddenly, there are two puppies in the house! Two dogs mean two walks, and two walks mean two pick-ups for two - well, you know. Who said I was ready for double duty? Much less double - OK, I'll stop.

And Little Tony is not city-savvy. Despite his wise-guy moniker, he's a backwoods doggie, through and through. Far from the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, he thinks peeing on the sidewalk is gross, but peeing in the apartment is fun. When I walk him here, he growls at the passing maltipoos and Labradoodles and cockadoodle-dos, as if to curse them for their bedazzled collars and fancy grooming appointments. "Go choke on your organic, free-range bison biscuit!" he seems to say. Pip tongues a piece of said biscuit still stuck in his teeth and feels embarrassed for everyone involved.

Me, too, Pip, me, too.

But when my mother called me a week ago, sounding stressed and worried about leaving her baby behind (Tony, not me), I had to offer to take him, and truthfully, I wanted to. I'm happy to be able to actually help my mother with something.

I'm starting to realize that growing up is more than simply distancing myself from my parents. Learning to function as an independent entity, a family unit of one (plus a pet and some friends) is certainly part of it, but a joy and obligation of adulthood is learning to reapproach our parents, not as children, but as equals. All my life, my mother has loved and supported me, and growing up means returning the favor.

I'm lucky that my mother is healthy and young, and she won't need me to really take care of her for a good long time, if ever. But it's nice to know that on the rare occasions she does need a little help, I can say, "I'm here for you."

For all the car rides to play practice, hair blow-outs before the big dance, countless home-cooked meals, fashion second opinions, career-advising, sick-day chicken soup and movie marathons, post-breakup pep talks, and phone calls for no reason but I'm walking somewhere and I'd like to hear her voice - to repay my mom for all that a mother does, let's just say, I would have to walk a lot of dogs.