We’re going to have to consider this a “pretend post” because I don’t think that a particular someone would appreciate me blabbing about what’s on my mind.
So now that I’ve disclosed my caveat (because I probably should have been a lawyer. No wait! Because I used to watch Ally McBeal), on to the post. The PRETEND post.
One more thing: Names have been changed to, um, protect myself from getting in trouble from the person whose name I’m changing.
Okay. Now on to the post.
Recently, I took someone I know shopping. And I know this person because I just happen to have given birth to her. We’ll call this person SALLY. It’s not really the shopping experience that’s on my mind but rather the object of our shopping experience and what it made me realize.
SALLY needed an undergarment. You know. The kind that can double as a slingshot. Or a booby trap – depending on what part of the world you live in.
The point is, first high school and now THIS?! There has to be a way to put the brakes on our kids growing up.
Confession: Having been a mother my entire adult life, I’m starting to get cold feet about my kids’ independence. This is where life revels in its own irony because it seems like just yesterday I was fantasizing about a little time and space to myself. But now that it’s actually starting to happen, I’m realizing that my kids are so much a part of who I am. Not an extension of myself, but the fixed and comfortable grounding points – the belly buttons – of my existence.
I look at my two older girls, now in their twenties, and I would donate an organ just to have them little again. (But not ANY organ. Something I have two of . . . like a kidney.)
So anyways, we’re shopping – SALLY and I – for this undergarment and while I’m browsing the racks for her non-size (she’s built like me; so far), she’s lurking in the pyjama section, eagle-eyeing the aisles to make sure that no one she knows comes within 100 yards. Gods forbid one of her friends should see her shopping . . . for underwear . . . with her mother.
Step two in the shopping process – a trip to the changing room to make sure said garment fits – was a definite NO GO. When I brought it up, SALLY’s eyes opened so wide that her eyebrows shot up past her forehead and completely left her face. The reaction I would expect had I suggested that we hand-cuff ourselves to the train tracks near her father’s house.
I didn’t argue.
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