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Remember the elderly woman I brought home from the hospital yesterday? The one with metastasized cancer, a bad heart, plugged-up arteries, and emphysema? The one who requires oxygen 24/7? The one who promised me she would sit quietly at home for the foreseeable future and let her lungs heal from the infection that landed her in the hospital? Promised me.

Yeah, that one.

She went AWOL last night. I called and called and there was no answer and I thought “OK, she’s collapsed and the ambulance is there” or “OK, they’ve both died” or “OK, they are slowly dying on the floor, and can’t quite reach the phone.” It was the same sick feeling I had when my kids would stay out waaaaaay past curfew and refuse to answer their cell phones and I knew, just knew, they had died in a fiery wreck. I’d get in my car and drive all over town until I found them. (This did not amuse them. Or their dates.)

So we drove down to Mom and Dad’s. Pulled in just as they were pulling in. When they saw me, the look that crossed their faces was exactly what my teenagers looked like when I asked them to roll down the steamed-up windows. Busted. Mom was feeling so much better, having escaped the clutches of death, that they decided to go out to dinner. The doctor’s instructions about staying inside, resting, etc.? She said, “oh, it was just a little dinner.”

How was I going to argue with that? You’re right. I wasn’t going to to say a damn thing. If anyone deserves to go out to dinner and eat pie and laugh, it’s my mom. So I didn’t ground her. (Not that I have the authority to do that. Mom definitely has the upper hand in this relationship.)

So here’s my advice, courtesy of my juvenile delinquent elderly mother: eat pie and laugh a lot this weekend. It’s good for what ails you.

My mother, the wild one.