I don't know how it started. We were talking about insecurities...how innocent comments can go wonky in the diseased self esteem. Last December, my mother met me at the airport. I was wearing a loose navy sweatshirt and nondescript blue jeans. She hadn't seen me in nine months, nine months wherein I had lost those last fifteen pounds and had my hair cut short. Her first comment after the obligatory hugging and twittering? "I didn't know it was you! You look like a little boy!" Now, I know I'm not one of the curvier members of my gender, and perhaps this knowledge factored into my hoisting that bit of verbal nothingness to full-mast.

She made to make amends tonight as it came to the surface while we made hilarity of human attraction. She was clothed in a soft cotton night shift—lacy with baby blue floral patterns. It was probably a lot like something that Auntie Em had hanging in her closet. She was blowing her nose and dabbing at one nostril with a vengeance while she chewed the inside of her lip. She paused her lip chewing to say, "I shouldn't have said that...you don't look like a boy." At my snort, she continued, "No, really," she kept swiping at that nostril and squinting at some ache or twinge. "Last Friday, in that skirt and those boots? You were hot."

It was wrong on so many levels...so many...but mostly because I've now learned that my mother thinks that little boys in skirts are hot.