MOMMY’S OFFICE

From the collection A Bit of Fantasy

Copyright March 2005

[Part 1]

        I remember the office Mommy used to have in the city, near the campus where she was getting her doctorate.  It was in a little apartment only two blocks from the library and one block from the swimming pool.   Some days we would walk to the library, and I would read all afternoon in the children’s section at a little table, while Mommy poured over huge books called medieval literature.  When she got very tired and fell asleep with her reading glasses on the pages, we’d take some of the books to the apartment, close down the computer, and drive to the farm to see if we could help Daddy with his new seedlings.  

Other days, like Saturdays, we’d get up early and go to the pool on campus.  It didn’t have a children’s section, but that was okay, since I can swim.  The lifeguards would let me wear my snorkel, sometimes, if only a few swimmers were there. They would tease me about being a “strawberry blonde,” and would help me whenever my pigtails got tangled around the snorkel.  Mommy would do ballerina-type exercises in the water, saying that helped her relax and “stay in shape.”  Daddy would arrive and act silly, turning somersaults in the water and calling the somersaults “flip turns.”

Next I would have a date for an afternoon and evening with Grandma and Grandpa on the farm, while Mommy and Daddy went to the symphony or to a fancy restaurant.  Sometimes I even spent the night in Daddy’s old room full of baseball bats, pitching trophies, and framed collections of tattered baseball cards, and went with Grandma and Grandpa to church the next morning.  Grandpa sings almost quietly, but I can hear him.  Daddy brings flowers to church.  He grows prize flowers on the farm all around our house, a “fixer-upper” he calls it, near Grandma and Grandpa’s house.