Memoir Class Continues...

OK, OK! In a rush... Much talking during today's class. Therefore not much writing time. And we got out late. So, this is more like a mem-let -- a memory fragment -- than an actual bit of memoir. However, it is what I came up with -- oh that I had hours and hours to follow this fun and winding road rather than work for a living!




You wouldn't think her irrational or prone to flights of fancy, just to look at her. Especially when she was in her thirties, as she would have been when I was 8 or 10 or 12.
She had a way of blending in. Fashionable, but not showy. A brunette with curled, above-the-shoulders hair and a purposefully made-up face. A brown or russet lipstick and a heavy coat of mascara, always. Clothes in earth tones, or as I called them, "varying shades of dirt."

She worked at a savings and loan. She sang in a church choir. She made homemade sweetbreads and pecan sandies and always iced her cakes. She was a perfectly normal mom. But she chased UFOs. Down one-lane country roads. With her two kids in tow.

My mother's UFO fixation was something I had completely forgotten until today. It's endearing, now, to recall this lost part of her, this pull to something unproven and unclear, this desire to investigate the inexplicable.