What I Pictured

A couple months ago, my mother had developed a secret group of friends.
“Okay, guys, I'm going out with some people from work,” she'd say in her mom-jeans and open toed high heels.
“You look good,” I'd say back. “Have fun.” She rarely goes out with friends at all; who was I to stop her? Only later when she came back at 9pm would I wonder. Because my mother is the kind of person who wakes up at 4:30 so she can shower, style her hair with an inordinate amount of hair spray and catch a bus downtown for her job on the thirty second floor of a bank. This 4:30 wake up time means she generally passes the hell out at around 7:30 or 8, only she'll be sitting upright in a chair in front of our ever-HGtv-blaring television. The 9 o'clock return from “fun with friends” was a shocker.

At the same time, I kept hearing about a guy on the bus named Alex. She said they rode into downtown at the same time in the mornings. I began to see her shuffle off to another room before taking phone calls from him. Her voice would jump an octave anytime she picked up. So I knew she liked him.

“Oh, I shouldn't like him, honey.” We were at Las Palmas (awesome Mexican food!) and she had decided to share.
“Why?” I pictured another older man. Like my former college professor that she dated for a year and a half.
“Because.” She grimaced. “He's...younger than me.”
I was slightly taken aback. “Way to go, Mom. Woah. Is he cute?”
“Oh, he's gorgeous.” She looked at the stereotypical-Mexican-restaurant mural on the wall, and sighed like a starry-eyed teenager.
“What's wrong with him? Why do you sound so pained?”
“Well. He's quite a bit younger than me.”
“You already said that.”
“Its significant.”
I sighed. “How much?”
“He's nineteen years younger than me.”
“...Woah, mom. Wow.”
It was a shock, but I decided that it was a good idea for her to get out of her shell a little bit. This young guy obviously liked my mom back, which was a little bizarre, but was encouraging. How many times would an opportunity like this arise? I would say. You can't pass something up like that without having just a little bit of fun with it. It doesn't have to be serious!

One night I practically pushed her out the door to meet him. She said she they were going to meet up with a bunch of friends from work at the Starbucks, and it took everything for me to convince her that even though it wouldn't work out with him in the long run, it could be like an experiment. Live a little! I yelped. She clip-clopped out the door.
At ten till midnight, I was a little worried. But I didn't call.
When she got home five minutes later, I knew something was up because she was flushed in the way that I am after someone kiss-attacks my face.
It was then that I pried, and asked questions about what he did for a living.
“He's a painter.”
“Like an artist?”
“No, like a--”
“--guy who paints houses, I got this. Why didn't you tell me his real name was Alejandro?”
“Not everybody who paints houses is foreign.”
“Well then, where's he from?”
“Guadalajara.”
“That's in Mexico, Mom.”
“I know.”
We just stood there for a moment.
“So you guys made out?”
“He kissed me. Yes.”
“...You're all disheveled.” One of my favorite words.
“Oh...” She sighed, shrugging it off, and walked into the kitchen. I followed.
“So did you make out in the car like high school kids, or what?” Because in spite of myself, I could not withhold my grin.

So with more interrogation, I figured out that my mother was “in like” with an illegal Mexican immigrant who worked as a painter and was nineteen years younger than her. She hadn't been going out with friends at all. She had been meeting him and calling it 'a big group from work'. It was a tad shocking. I didn't like it.

And I decided that the difference between me dating Marlon (21, also a painter, Hondureno, crossed the border on foot, had scars to show) and my mother dating Alex was that my mom was different from me. I liked her that way. I didn't want her to have to put up with foreign guys who didn't know how to be gentle. Because most of them don't. They are pushy in a subtle way that I, the experienced daughter, am fully aware of, and I don't want my hopelessly innocent, pure, sweet mother feeling like a used wash rag. It wasn't just foreign guys at all, I just didn't want some strange man adulterating her so that she was wise to all the filth and knows how it works like I do. I'd rather her be blindly afraid of things she doesn't understand.

Intrinsically, I think it mostly made me feel sick to think that I convinced her to embark on that ridiculous thing. I had no idea who that guy was-- she wouldn't tell me! I mean, they rode the bus together into downtown Nashville; I figured he worked at the bank too or something!