Jul. 17th, 2014 10:35 pm
Un appel à Maman
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muckefuckI caught Mom on the phone just as she was dozing off in her car in front of her condo complex. We talked until she was worried her neighbours might come out to check on her. (Apparently she fell dead asleep on Monday, prompting a passerby to tap on the window in order to make sure she wasn't dead.) Nothing too heavy this time--mostly chitchat about her knitting and her weekend with my sister's boys. Until, of course, I come out with, "Did you ever try to teach us about informed consent?"
As I suspect, my sister's experience was entirely different from mine. Mom even forbade her from dating until she was 16. (She eventually found a boy so completely nonthreatening she was able to talk her way out of that.) I don't remember my mom so much as talking to me about dating. She did teach us as children that we didn't have to kiss or be around anyone we didn't want to, a response to the traumas of her own childhood when wrapping yourself in head-on dead animals was de rigueur for mature ladies of a particular social set.
She also filled me in on a visit from one of her classmates that I don't recall at all, despite the fact that she had her French husband and five marmots in tow. (It apparently did not go well.) He was an engineer she'd met while Peace Corpsing in Algeria under the Boumédienne régime. All this came back when I mentioned the Labro.
As I suspect, my sister's experience was entirely different from mine. Mom even forbade her from dating until she was 16. (She eventually found a boy so completely nonthreatening she was able to talk her way out of that.) I don't remember my mom so much as talking to me about dating. She did teach us as children that we didn't have to kiss or be around anyone we didn't want to, a response to the traumas of her own childhood when wrapping yourself in head-on dead animals was de rigueur for mature ladies of a particular social set.
She also filled me in on a visit from one of her classmates that I don't recall at all, despite the fact that she had her French husband and five marmots in tow. (It apparently did not go well.) He was an engineer she'd met while Peace Corpsing in Algeria under the Boumédienne régime. All this came back when I mentioned the Labro.
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