Go Ask Amy

She had me from “we are not Kleenex people.”

What’s not to like about a woman who soaks up her divorce tears with a roll of Charmin? After the last tear has been absorbed, Amy Dickinson and her daughter move out of her sister’s house in Freeville, New York to Washington, D.C. No matter where her physical address is, however, home is always Freeville.

One’s true home is an integral theme to Dickinson’s memoir The Mighty Queens of Freeville. Although she is a single mother, raised by a single mother, both she and her daughter are always surrounded by an extended family of close sisters - who still meet once a week for a diner breakfast even though they see each other every day anyway.

Her life experiences in and around Freeville read like letters to an advice column:

Dear Amy,
My ex-husband is allergic to cats…

Dear Amy,
My father has just married his fourth wife…

Dear Amy,
My Sunday school student ate Peanut Jesus…

Perhaps this illustrates why Dickinson was chosen to take up Ann Landers’ pen in her advice column "Ask Amy."

If this wasn’t a library book, I would have been tempted to add marginalia like “so true” and “!” throughout chapters entitled “Falling Up” and “Dork Like Me.” However, I wouldn't have wasted any ink on a rather long chapter about her cat Pumpkin.

While I consider subscribing to a newspaper that carries Dickinson’s column for more of her wit and wisdom, I’ll just have to settle for listening to her on NPR. And of course I’ll be on the lookout for the cookbook her mother has always been meaning to write: After the Cat has Licked It.