A girl trapped in a woman’s body
I drove by mom’s house on my way back from Metairie and caught her trying to water her decrepit looking flowers with this huge watering can. The past two times I was there she had this totally retarded guy doing her flowers. I say that not kindly – because he is a freak not someone with a disability – she lent him money and he could never pay her back so she told him to make it up by putting flowers in her pots that line her walkway.
He works in some kind of landscaping gig but GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY I have never seen such a thing – he had these dead marigolds he planted with these petunias – all just slap dash – nothing going together – it’s just like a crime scene, a crime against flowers. And she’s out there watering this mess of a landscape. Good grief.
I think about my own insanity and take heart that the chaos of leggy burnt marigolds, mingled with white tinged pink impatiens, coupled with purple petunias all half hanging out of limp soil is not the first thing I see in the morning. It gives me pause.
I took the can from her and finished the watering. I was still in my bike shorts from this morning’s bike ride having gotten absorbed into work and such during the day. I was on the phone chatting with L, and she kept coming out and looking at the job I was doing with her flowers, and pointing to areas she thought I had missed. When I hung up, she came outside and put her hands on her hips and said, “Look at you.”
And I said, “What?”
She said: “You look like a little girl with your hair in that pony tail and wearing that baby blue shirt.”
Delusional, I thought. But I told her, “Girl trapped in a woman’s body, mom.”
She came over and put her arms around me tight and held me close against her and cooed, “Oh honey, I know. Oh, don’t I know.”
Mothers – whatyagonnado?