Either way, if memory serves me correctly, what I said was, "Ooohh....tatting...it's so very lovely."
Apparently he heard something else...
My beautiful boy with his naturally beautiful and completely perfect brown skin! The shock. The dismay. The urge to send him to his room! What is a mother of a 25-year old do when he listens to his own drummer as she has always instructed him to do?
I tried reasoning and was told the human body is a canvas. Then why, Kenny, did they invent canvas?
I tried begging and he laughed. I tried tears - which weren't crocodile and which for a moment seemed to hold the promise of swaying him. But in the end, all talk and theatrics proved futile.
At first, it was almost more than I could bear. If I was ever in need of a lie down, smelling salts and a cool cloth dipped in lavender, it was now.
But, as time has passed, I've become more and more attached to this imagery that has spoken to my son's heart. It's artfully done and possesses a certain intensity that is compelling. The boy has always been complex.
However, my dream of whiling away idle hours with tatting needles in hand and a cup of tea sitting nearby are forever shattered.
Of course I'd be dressed in high Victorian style and overlooking a well-manicured and rambling expanse of lawn!
Oh, well, I wasn't getting very far with the tatting anyway. It's hard and the going is slow!
And my dream of Kenny someday taking up modeling? Alas, that dream too is slowly but surely slipping away.
Now I know how my mother felt when I told her I had no intention of becoming a marine biologist.
Would all of this had played out differently if I had taken up knitting instead of tatting?
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