She stays on the phone for hours chatting with her friends. She goes out to dances two to five times a week and has a better social life than I do. She spends hours selecting exactly the right clothes to wear to her social events and even more time perfecting her hair and makeup. But she is not a typical teenager; no, she is my senior citizen mother.Mom likes dancing so much that I’ve seen her do a few fancy steps down a grocery store aisle when some especially appealing music is playing. I, of course, am hiding behind the nearest display.
Square dancing is her current phase (or should I say craze). Mom sews her own square dance outfits.
Never having cut out a pattern before, she corners me to do it when I am relaxing on Sunday afternoons. There is no escape.
I hate sewing. Dredging up the sewing skills I ‘learned’ in that one lowly high school Home Ec class, I usually manage to get the material cut correctly. Then, working together, (thank goodness the computerized sewing machine knows more than we do) we complete the outfits. Perhaps not quite in the way the pattern designers intended, but I prefer to think Mom is making a fashion statement.
A visit with her appointment calendar is among Mom’s essential daily requirements. There are days when she attends more than one dance. For a while we fought over one car when mine was beyond revival. That took some juggling of our busy schedules.
“Can I have the car Tuesday?”
“I have a dance.”
“How about Thursday?”
“I have a dance.”
I often feel like I’m sending a teenager out on a date when Mom gets ready to leave. “When will you get back?” Gee, maybe I should set a curfew?
Raising parents is hard to do.
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