Dreams of her mother

“Where are you going tonight?” Beatrix stood in the bathroom door, watching me tie a belt around a cardigan. My hair was flippy and I wore makeup. She could tell I wasn’t preparing for a night of rolling Little Smokies in canned crescent roll dough.

Last night, I had a dinner with some of my bloggy friends. I’ve been gone a lot lately, but as I tell everyone who cares and doesn’t care, that’s just the way it worked out. Thankfully, the calendar boxes are clearing and I’ll be at home a lot more in the coming weeks. If my calendar were pimply teenaged boy, it’s apparent his mom finally took him to a dermatologist. The redness is diminishing. I don’t have the urge to pop some days into oblivion. My calendar might ask someone to prom.

She proposed coming with me. I said it was just for grown-ups. Then she brightened, “Can I travel with you some time?’ I said I would love that. She grinned, ‘Like to New York City or Paris?’

If she’s asking to go to NYC or Paris as a fresh five-year-old, where will she want to go when she’s 16? Antarctica? Saturn’s moons? I laughed at her suggestion, assuring her that I would be happy to go to New York City or Paris with her. I’ve never been. We could see those cities for the first time, together. Just when I was picturing the two of us standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower with my embroidered Gretchen beret and her Beatrix beret, looking all Griswoldian, she piped up, ‘And when I grow up, I’m going to work at the Applebee’s in New York City!”

I love my dreamer. Why work at a location on a suburban Denver corner, when you can serve tourists from suburban, Denver, Akron, Tuscon? I’ll be the grateful one in the I Heart NYC shirt with the best table in the house.

This is my Just Write entry, which is hosted by Heather of the Extraordinary Ordinary.