The Right To Bare Arms
Joy Mayfield
©
Copyright 2021 by Joy Mayfield
|
Photo courtesy of Unsplash. |
I never thought about my arms specifically
until 2006. That is the year my mother forewarned
me, “Your arms will turn on you one day.”
In 2006 my mother was 87 and I was 57.
She lived in a retirement community outside Baltimore, Maryland,
while I lived 650 miles away from her in the suburbs of Nashville,
Tennessee.
When our mother turned 85 and left her home of 50
years for a retirement community, my 4 siblings and I decided to take
shifts looking in on Mom. I would dutifully drive from
Tennessee to Maryland every summer for 2 weeks to honor my commitment
to my siblings and stay with Mom; not that she required any
assistance. In fact, she braced at the very notion of us
caring for her and remained staunchly independent well into her
90’s.
And so it was that in the summer of 2006 I found
myself once again at my Mother’s patio door ready to fulfill my
annual two-week commitment. I knocked and
within seconds she flung the door open and stood before me.
A quick glance and I noted immediately that something about her
appearance was off. A flash of fear ran through
me. Was it time to have Mom assessed for dementia?
She noticed my quizzical look, saw me eyeing her
blouse in particular and declared in effrontery, “I told you
your arms would turn on you one day.”
As she stepped aside to allow me entry, I grabbed my
luggage and headed for the guest bedroom all the while racking my
brain trying to figure out just what my mother had on her arms and
why there was something so incongruous about her look. Suddenly
with a flash of recognition, I remembered an old paisley sleeveless
blouse my mother used to wear in the early 1970’s.
Might you be begging to ask, “what is paisley?”
A quick internet search will prove educational.
Briefly, paisley was a popular colorful pattern printed
on cotton and worn by both males and females in the flamboyant hippie
era. In the “further minutiae of the 60’s”
department, there was even a word coined to describe the fashion of
that spirited, rebellious time specific to hippie attire and that
word was “mod.” Mom latched onto the vernacular
“mod” and continued to use the term for decades despite
its quick exit from common parlance. In point of fact,
Mom thought using the word “mod” forevermore made
her quite hip and groovy. Sigh. Typical of Mom that
30+ years after the swinging 60’s, she would still refer to her
dated wardrobe as “mod” and the epitome of haute couture.
Goodness, let us return to the story at hand.
Mom’s bizarre blouse in its current altered
state and my remote memory of its origins were askew in my mind’s
eye. There was something not quite right about her blouse. I
allowed a worry to seep into my consciousness then that Mom’s
normal eccentricity had ratcheted up since I last visited her.
I worried that her bizarre ensemble might attract the attention of
the Social Worker on staff whose sole duty it was to diagnose mental
deterioration in residents under her charge and condemn the poor
souls forevermore to Assisted Living, a doomed sentence if there ever
was one in a senior living facility.
Mom followed me into the bedroom, noted again me
staring at her blouse and my puzzled expression and declared with
aplomb, “yes, these custom-made sleeves were once the sheer
curtains that used to hang in your old bedroom. You know how I
disdain wasting anything that can be repurposed.” “Besides,
you know I’ve always considered myself an amateur fashion
designer and anyway, I am an excellent seamstress!”
In that moment I did not know what to say.
I felt she was expecting a compliment of some sort either for her
originality, her thriftiness or her expert sewing skills.
Two thoughts were swirling through my head just then: “is
my mother a candidate for the Memory Care Unit? Are
those mutton-chop sleeves she’s wearing?”
I knew Mom was proud of her frugalness in reusing the
old curtain sheers and was equally proud of her sewing skills.
I also suspected she truly believed these sleeves were a fashion
statement that might catch on with the over 70 set.
After I’d unpacked and settled in, we sat on
the couch together. My mother patted my hand and assured me she
was mentally sound. She looked me straight in the
face and in a moment of compassion and empathy, she professed that no
one should have to look at an old woman’s arms and that is why
she created her “sheer sleeve attachments.”
At the time I thought her vanity untoward.
Alas, time has a way of sneaking up on us. Now I am 72 and yes,
my arms have indeed turned on me.
In the interest of full disclosure, may I confess
here and now that since that visit with Mom and often when dusting
the dining room table, I have noted my eyes drifting over to the
windows, the windows covered in sheers. And I find I have
to squint and look at those sheers twice.
When I talk to my old friends about the state of our
arms, the lament is the same and it is nothing but a sad refrain on
what we once took for granted: taut and muscular arms with
flawlessly pink skin flecked with golden hairs. It’s all
a mere memory to us now. Those golden hairs?
Replaced by errant kinked black wires randomly sprouting on what
appears to be Naugahyde or someone’s vintage leather purse.
We had no idea the downward trajectory our arms would
make over time.
We old girlfriends, being children of the 60’s,
however, have decided that to despair is not an option and that we
should instead put a positive spin on our FAM (flabby arms malady).
Celebrate our flabby arms? Yes, Flabby arms
unite!
We’ve even designed a T-Shirt specific to our
cause:
WE DEMAND THE RIGHT
TO BARE ARMS
Available
in all sizes and colors. Long sleeve only, but of
course.
(Unless
you
type
the
author's name
in
the subject
line
of the message
we
won't know where to send it.)
Book
Case
Home
Page
The
Preservation Foundation, Inc., A Nonprofit Book Publisher