like the auntie mame of stage and screen

When I was born, my father dubbed his sister, my Aunt Patricia with the nickname "Auntie Mame," after the vibrant and eccentric character of stage and screen. On so many levels, it applies, but probably not in the way he'd imagined. She's vibrant all right, with an ever-ready laugh and a penchant for big, bright prints. And eccentric. I mean, how many ex-nuns do you know who marry Jewish husbands? How many aunts do you have who refuse -- I mean ABSOLUTELY REFUSE -- to accept a gift if it appears to be something that might need dusting sometime in the future? How many relatives do you know that have completely put down and then removed the wall-to-wall carpeting in three separate homes before going back every single time to parquet flooring?

"Aren't you the one who told me that doing something again and again and expecting a different result is an indication of insanity," I asked after the third removal/installment.

"Well, yes, but this is different. And besides, it's all Ken's fault."

For the record, everything is always my uncle Ken's fault. Some might find that burdensome after a while, but he seems to handle it with good grace, if also a lot of sighing and hands-in-the-air-throwing and bowed head-shaking.

"Except that it's really my fault," she confesses more quietly and with a little conspiratorial laugh.

"You see, Ken likes carpeting. I hate wall-to-wall carpeting. So I let him get it, but you just can't clean it. Carpet always looks dirty to me. If you get the dark stuff, every little piece of string shows. With the light stuff and the dogs and the peeing by the dogs it gets stained and . . . forget it. I hate carpet. I can't stand it. I LOVE my hard wood floors. You Swiffer it. You take a damp cloth and voila! It's clean!" And then she adds by way of explanation or to excuse herself from sounding completely certifiable, "You know how everyone has their thing."

"Yeah," I say, laughing, "but you have lots of things."

"But this would be a main thing. My main thing is floors."

And like with the Auntie Mame of stage and screen, there's no arguing with mine. So last night on the phone, her main thing was floors. Tomorrow it might be pickles.

"You know I hate pickles," she'll say to my uncle. "Why would you buy me a sandwich with pickles?!"

"What are you talking about?" he'll gasp in surprise. (He does that a lot. Actually, we all do. There's always a lot of gasping-in-surprise around my Auntie Mame.) "You LOVE pickles!"

"Well, yeah, but not those pickles. Those are nasty pickles ," she'll dismiss, wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips. "I only like pickles that come in a jar when you know that no one's touched them."

"How do you think they make the rest of the sandwich?!" he'll reason, jaw dropped in confused bemusement, "They have to touch the rest of the sandwich to make the sandwich, too!"

"But that's different," she'll demur.

"HOW?! How is that different?" he'll demand.

"It just is," she'll say. And that will be that.

But floors and pickles aside, really, her honest-to-God main thing is her love for her dogs, her four Bichon Frises -- Rambo, Rocky, Popcorn and Hercules. If the Auntie Mame of stage and screen had a passion for travel, mine's main passion is for her puppies. And they are equally devoted to her. Obsessively so. To the exclusion of all else on the planet. Even my uncle. Who feeds them. Who brushes their teeth. Nightly. At my aunt's behest, of course.

So I wasn't remarkably surprised when last night, while on the phone with her, all of a sudden a deafening cacophony of Bichon barking erupted in the background followed by the following "conversation":

"You SCARED them!" she's yelling at my uncle over the chaos.

"By walking into my own bedroom?!" I hear him yell back, just to be heard over the continuing roar.

"They were SLEEPING!" she yells in response.

"They were sleep-ing," she tsks disapprovingly to me and then laughing in delight as one would at the antics of a favorite trained monkey, "TRY IT AGAIN, HON!"

"Once bitten, twice shy," he quips back from the other room, having made a swift exit.

"What does he mean 'once bitten?'" I want to know.

"Oh, Rocky bit him," she says nonchalantly as one might say, Oh, I bought milk today.

"Rocky bit him? Why?! When did this happen?"

"Last week," she tells me and then shouts so her husband can hear, "He came into the bedroom in a THREATENING MANNER."

"I did NOT!" I hear him from afar. "I was simply walking to the dresser. He bit me for NO REASON WHATSOEVER."

"He did," she confirms, giggling, "You're such a bad dog," she tells Rocky. But I can tell she's petting him as she says it. And then to me, "Right on the knee. It was really horrible." And then gasping theatrically for punctuation, "Ken was bleeding." And then, pointedly, "But, you know, it really was his own fault."

"HOW IS IT MY FAULT?!" my uncle demands, once again shouting over a chorus of barks as he walks back into the bedroom, "Am I not allowed to walk freely through my own house?! Am I not king of this castle?! Lord and master of my domain?!" I can picture him, arms akimbo, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Well. . . no," my aunt states with a certain definite finality, leaving no room for argument or debate.

I can practically hear my uncle sigh in defeat, "You've trained them to hate me," he accuses. "Jill, your aunt has trained her dogs to hate me!" he yells.

"They don't hate you!" she tells my uncle Ken.

"They don't hate him," she explains me.

"They looooove their Papa Ken," she reminds the dogs.

And then, gleefully, back to me, "But they love me more."

And as with the Auntie Mame of stage and screen, the same thing can be said of mine: At the end of the day, what isn't there to love?