Mum's Boyfriend
My mother is in love, and I don’t know what to do. You see, for nearly 50 years my mother had no love-life. She just had Dad. And now with my father barely cold in his grave lo these past seven years, my mother has Harry.
Harry is her boyfriend, another difficult concept to accept. Boyfriends have pimples and panel vans. They don’t have dentures and Toyotas with bumper stickers that read “My other car is a golf cart.”
Harry seems like a nice enough guy—for someone else’s mother. Actually, I’ve never met him, but I hear about him frequently, incessantly, relentlessly, whenever I speak to Mum on the phone.
When my father died she moved back to her native hometown. For awhile she stayed busy decorating her home, visiting her sisters and old friends, and lunching at the local senior centre. That’s where it happened!
Those senior citizen centres are nothing but pickup joints. The men hang out by the three-bean salad and ogle every available 70-year-old who comes down the buffet line.
And Gold Coast seniors are the most proficient hogwash slingers ever. “Why, Miss Doris, you can’t possibly remember Tommy Dorsey. He was way before your time.”
learning to accept Harry
So now Harry and Mum are pretty much inseparable.
He comes over nearly every day and fixes little things around her house. He takes her out to dinner, and she prepares him home-cooked meals. When she fell and broke her wrist, he drove her to the doctor and to her physical therapy appointments.
Like I said, he’s nice enough. For someone else’s mother.
But the way I see it, my mother belongs with my father. That’s the way it’s always been. Why can’t she be content to maybe take a stenciling class or join the lawn bowls club? Is that asking too much?
I guess it is. God put in us a need for companionship, and for Mum, Harry fulfils that need. Fortunately, love is a renewable resource. Mum can love Dad and Harry, too, and she won’t run out of love. In fact, love increases with use.
So I’m learning to accept Harry and, more important, to accept him and Mum together. One of these days I’ll go and visit her, and I’ll see Harry standing where my dad used to be. That’s OK. It really is. It’ll be good to see Mum with a nice guy who loves her, rather than see her standing alone.
Adapted, with permission, from Women of Spirit.
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