"There, you see, Lisa, I have crafted my love into verses, as these peasant men do while they toil all day in their fields."

[She recites, just to belabor the point, before carefully setting the love letter aside onto the mattress and moving to look at the diagram pages with him, instead.]

...Could your mother do magic, to begin with? She loved science so much, it's hard to imagine her tolerating something like magic, and a spell will always fail if you don't first believe it can succeed...