Saw my doctor
today - routine visit.
"Do you work
out, Peggy?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How many
times a week?"
"Well, I try
for three, but sometimes, it's only two... hehe."
"Okay,"
he said, smiling.
"How long do
you spend working out and what do you do?”
"About 30
minutes,” I said. “I work out with weights and walk."
I was starting to
feel a little agitated and tempted to ask if HE
worked out. And what he had for
breakfast.
But that would have been disrespectful,
wouldn’t it? That would
have brought back
all the times my mother said, “You must respect your
elders!” And all the times we’d run into one of her friends
while shopping
and she’d squeeze my hand really tight (I’d have to
stifle a scream) so I
wouldn’t say something that would embarrass her.
Lessons I learned
at an early age never left me. How could they?
She striped my bare
legs with a peach tree switch if I didn’t mind her to
the letter.
Yet we were so
different. I was nothing like her. And didn’t want to be.
I often wonder if she was trying to
make me into something she never was.
She was her own person – lived by her own rules.
I’ve seen her in a
situation like I was, when a doctor was asking a lot of questions and it didn't bother her a bit, when she'd had enough, to say,
“That’s none
of your business!”
She was more like a spoiled child than an adult. And I loved her still.
