Where there’s smoke ...

OY, what an Easter.

First, my wife tricked me into going to the sunrise service by telling me she was taking me fishing. Boy, did I feel silly, showing up for Easter service with waders and a trout basket.

“Last time I fall for that,” I told her.

“Probably not,” she said.

Seriously, these are rocky times for our young marriage. The other day, I told my wife that I liked the way she’d lightened her hair. Well, apparently, she hadn’t lightened her hair. My advice: Never mention their hair. Better yet, marry a bald woman.

So, she’s a little upset about the hair thing, no question. In addition, she’s totally on edge about her mother’s annual visit, which jump-started a bunch of home improvement projects.

Now, as any married guy will tell you, home improvement projects can be rough on a relationship, a precursor to real trouble. Take a lover. Plunder the savings. I don’t care. But if you make me hang one more stinkin’ picture ...

“A little higher,” my wife says, as I help hang another picture. “No wait, a little

lower ... “

She can probably tell from my body language that I’m not really into hanging pictures. Her first clue is that I flop down on the couch and turn on a ballgame.

“You think we could paint those doors?” she says, tilting her head in that pretty way she has.

Oy, what an Easter.

Then her mother arrives. My mum-in-law visits us almost every year -- usually arriving on her broom, nonstop from Miami. I love her, don’t get me wrong, but we have the usual mother-in-law tensions. Think Northern Ireland. Think what Grant did to those poor Confederates at Vicksburg.

This is exacerbated by the anxieties of my dear wife, who wants things to be just right for her mother’s visit. Not merely OK. Perfect. Never mind that the old girl can barely see anymore and trips constantly over the furniture.

“If you really want to impress her,” I suggest, “you should rent a different husband.”

“You can rent those?” my wife asks.

“This is L.A.,” I remind her. “You can rent anything.”

This is L.A., all right. The other night I went to this private cigar club with my buddy Don. It was like a safe house in Berlin. Secret entrance, special keys. I was pretty sure I was about to be poisoned. Or tortured, which I’m pretty used to and might not even notice.

“This way,” Don says, leading me up a narrow staircase.

In a cigar club, you sit around drinking hard liquor and listening to soft music. Flat screens are everywhere and the hostesses weigh no more than fine chiffon. I guess cigar club designers think that’s what guys like, to be surrounded by lots of skinny stuff.

Then there’s that smell.

Now, my nose is very limited. I can identify only about five scents total, all of them very intoxicating. There is the scent of a new baseball glove, or the scent of the sea after a long journey through the desert.

There is the fetching scent of chicken on the grill or the wild aroma of a dog after a walk in the rain.

All of these are wonderful smells. The best smells. But for me, none of them tops the meaty aroma of a good cigar. Light 100 of them at once, and you have a cigar symphony. That night, at the club on Canon Drive, we were like the Vienna Philharmonic.

“This is pretty cool,” I tell Don as smoke curls out our ears.

“I come here every Thursday,” he says between puffs.

Of course, the trouble with a cigar -- or in this case, 100 cigars -- is that you wear the smell for days. It’s sort of like being attacked by 100 skunks.

So back home, the kids notice that I am wearing the aroma of 100 cigars. It’s not like them to complain, but one of them finally says something, then another follows, and soon they are all sniffing the air and chattering like gulls. It is unanimous that they don’t much care for the manly smell of a good cigar.

“You can’t live your life in a bubble,” I tell them.

“Yes, you can,” one of them says.

“You should try a bubble, Dad.”

Then, with Grandma’s visit growing closer by the minute, we rush to decorate a bunch of Easter eggs. In the Ukraine, where Grandma’s originally from, they decorate eggs in elaborate designs, which takes hours. In Ukraine, they spend more time decorating the egg than the chicken spent producing it.

“I thought Grandma was from Florida?” one of the kids says.

“Before that, she lived in Ukrainia,” I explain.

“Dad, there’s no such place as Ukrainia,” the older daughter notes.

“There isn’t?” I say.

“No.”

I knew she was an impostor.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com. For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.