Page 39 of Loathe at First Sight

That’s alright. It was a good lesson in that knights don’t actually come rescue the maidens.

Lesson learned.

thirteen

Fall Down, Get Back Up

Liz

My phone starts ringing from the countertop next to the sink where I’m washing dishes. I consider not answering, but I glance toward the screen and see that it’s my mom.

Quickly, I grab a dish towel and dry my hands, so I can answer.

“Hey, Mom,” I greet.

“Hey, sweetheart. How’s it going?”

“Oh, it’s alright, I guess. How are you?”

“Eh. Same old, same old. You know me. I’m not ever doing anything exciting.”

“You could move up here and hang out with your son whenever you want,” I offer. “You know I’d pay to bring you up here.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she grumbles.

Even though my mother and I lived in Michigan my whole childhood, when I moved to Miami for work, she came with me. She fell in love with it and decided never to leave.

When I moved up here to start over, I tried to convince her to come with me. I know she misses me but not enough to give up the warm weather and sunny skies of Florida.

I don’t blame her. She’s made a good life for herself there. She has a fun group of friends and a nice condo in an over-fifty community. As much as I would love to have her here, I honestly don’t expect her to uproot her life to follow me across the country…again.

She says, “If I moved up there to the rainy capital of the country, my joints would hurt so bad that I probably couldn’t even roll out of bed in the morning.”

“But in Florida, you jump out of bed, ready to greet the day?”

She laughs. “Well, not exactly. But that has less to do with my joints and more to do with the fact that I just don’t want to get out of bed.”

“It’s all that late-night Bingo you’ve been playing.” I may sound like I’m joking, but I’m not. She and her friends can get a little wild on their Bingo nights.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you? We’ve been skipping the Bingo lately and playing strip Poker.”

“Mom!” I exclaim, completely shocked.

She starts laughing so hard she lets out a couple of snorts. “Oh, honey, I’m just kidding. I just wanted to see what you’d say.”

“Had me thinking I’d have to come down there and kick some old man's ass.”

“Oh, no. You don't have to do that."

My dad died before I was born, and my mom has never shown any interest in dating ever since. I’m convinced that he turned her off to the idea of it altogether.

Wanting to change the subject, she asks, “So, how are you doing? Is the shop doing alright?”

“The shop is good. Been keeping pretty busy. And I’m fine. Just working a lot.”

“You work too much,” she says. “You need to have some fun.”

“You know I like working, Mom. It helps to keep my mind busy.”

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