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All Moms have their resources-and these are mine. As I stand in the kitchen enduring this gratingly enunciated and elongated syllable, clad in my purple running shorts and t-shirt, with that creatively unpromising can of olives in my hand, I remind myself that Somewhere in Time I'm on a six month Seaborne cruise with my handsome personal trainer, that I have a thong collection non pareil in which I am devastatingly glamorous and amazingly thin, that I have been given jewelry to rival the Queen of England's- maybe even Elizabeth Taylor's -by an adoring loveslave who travels the world in search of gifts to please me. I remember the smell of the forests that are my home in another world, and feel the weight of the Uzi in my hands while I prowl the woods searching for injustices to avenge, or for the elusive crusty miner and his mule, my gleaming blonde hair (miraculously three feet longer) catching the light as it flows around my perfect face and body. I recall the thrill of finding le mot juste with which to polish a sentence asserting the rightful position of Beethoven as a classical composer, the satisfaction of conveying a thought or a description exactly as I intended, the thrill of a fantasy that evolves with a life of its own from the keyboards of two word-loving dreamers. And it is these other identities and worlds that sustain me while I look into those beautiful, condescending teenage eyes, and enable me to smile as I silently respond, "You may think you're looking at a woman with just a can of black olives in her hand and Keds on her feet, but Somewhere in Time, there are diamonds and rubies on these fingers and frosting has been licked from these toes." |
