Some days, the phone rings right about lunchtime, just as I’m getting out a plate and starting to make lunch or right when my leftovers have been warmed to gooey perfection and I’ve sunk my fork in for the first bite.
Rrrrriiiiiiing!
I know who it is. The conversation often goes something like this:
“It’s your Mu-THER,” the voice on the other end sings.
“Yes, it is,” I say.
She calls on her lunch hour from work. I watch as my lunch grows cold and stiff. My stomach growls like a ravenous bear waking from its winter nap.
She wants to know what I’m doing.
“Eating lunch,” I say.
“Well I won’t keep ya.” Then she chats for a bit, and then she wants to know if my husband is coming home for lunch. He often does.
So the other day, she said, “Gosh, Karen. Y’all could have a quickie at lunch.”
No. She. Didn’t. I could have thrown up the empty contents of my stomach. Just ew. It was quiet on my end. My mind goes blank from there. We must have hung up quickly.
I relayed the conversation to my husband. “You should have asked if that’s what she and your dad did,” he said.
“Gross! She would have told me. I don’t want to know about that!”
“Then you should have told her we were,” he said.
“Then she would have asked about it or something,” I said, still trying to shake the horrible sentence from my head.
Mothers and daughters and talk about a lunchtime quickie do not mix. If I hear the word sex from my mom’s mouth, I revert to teenhood when I prayed she wouldn’t bring it up. I pretended not to know about it and I pretended parents never did it. Approaching 40, my mindset hasn’t changed, and if the conversation comes up, I must fight my gag reflex, put hands over ears, and scream “la la la la la la la la la la la” at the top of my lungs. Just ew.
Mom in the Muddle 