Did you ever see the movies "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"? Well - this weekend at my 50th birthday party - my mother surprised me with a pair of red panties that are about forty four years old. They are quite simple really - silky red with a trim of lace. If I didn't know that they had spent decades in a drawer - I wouldn't have guessed. Apparently - these were panties that my mother gave to my father on his 40th birthday. It was quite provocative in my mother's day to give lingerie in front of guests - but my mother is nothing if not provocative. And she did it again - only this time - the very same panties were presented to me -forty four years later on my 50th birthday! And once again - my mother stunned the party goers into silence. It was not the fact that my mother was giving me a sexy, red pantie - it was the fact that it was hers.....What mother does that? Who does that?
No one knew really what to think....there was a lot of embarrassed laughter and strained jokes flying around the room - but later when I was alone with her card - and the red panties - I was really able to understand what my mother was giving me. It was a gift that most women never receive from their mothers. My 84 years old mother was telling me to go for it.
She was telling me that she supported me in being a sexual being and living out loud. And she was she telling me that she was once sexual too - and shameless. And for a time - after my father's death that she had put those red panties in a drawer - something so important to her that she kept them all of these years later.
In her card to me - she said that she was passing the Olympic torch to me - red and flaming. And that she wanted me to wear them proudly and with joy. Think about that for a minute. How many mother's give their daughters such a gift.
