Thursday, February 13, 2014

Yummy Mummys I Have Loved Before, Vignette Number One

First, we have to look up term in Wikipedia. "A yummy mummy would have several children and yet remain a "girl around town", dressing fashionably and appearing well-groomed and carefree. I guess there's even a yummy mummy backlash because the expectation has led some mummys to feel inadequate. What if in America, all mummys were yummy? That really is a self-evident truth.
 
I'm not sure how that term works out for me. I just want a good group noun for making generalizations plus an alternative to Mothers I'd Like To.... I want a way to discuss my experience of dating moms, and I have dated moms and women before children since my divorce in January 1999. In so many ways, the moms are so much more interesting.
 
I dated a woman who brought her daughter up to audition at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, and the family unit made a weekend of it with two daughters and mom driving over from south of Flint, north of Detroit. The sisters were old enough to watch television alone at the resort in Montague. So, I picked up my friend at the resort and we drove into town for Heinekens at a roadhouse called Gary's. We connected, talked about everything, and we went back to the resort. We kissed and caressed in the car outside their ranch, and even though I offered to take a cabin on the other side of the complex, she wished to postpone intimacies. And so we did.
 
I liked the daughters, although they thought mom was stooping a bit for seeing me. I drove them around with mom, bought them gelato in Grand Haven, showed them the lighthouses from Grand Haven up to the Little Sables, took them all to a nice dinners on my tab. I liked how the budding songstress sang in the car, German lieder, as we drove the wooded, rolling countryside.
 
Later that summer, she dropped of the songstress daughter off for voice camp at Blue Lake, and she wanted to save money, and asked if she could stay with me. As I had a guest bedroom, I washed the bed clothing, and she showed up with the second daughter, the one who hadn't learned to sing yet. I slept on the couch.
 
The next morning, I got up normally, and showered and dressed and went to get my keys from the coffee table. Dressed in a flannel nightgown, she had curled up on my couch with a mischievous smile. I had fifteen minutes to make to work, so I gave her a kiss and she followed me to the door and I waved goodbye and she closed it behind me.
 
The correct answer was, "This daughter is a sound sleeper"?
 
When I got home, she had left a nice note, thanks for everything, and a gift box labeled "Secret Stuff", and it had a few items from the beach, stones with fossils and oddly shaped scraps of driftwood. She had left the key in the envelope in the furnace room, as I had asked. It was the last time I had any communication at all from her.
 
Picture of Gelato by Aaron Logan

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