Mama Buys a Horse

To have and to hold the reins

Linda’s new boyfriend, Eddie, liked horses. Mama soon reported, “I’ve bought a horse! And the cutest riding outfit,” producing a picture of a quarter horse with a Western saddle.

Previously indifferent when we kept horses, Mama never learned to ride.

Our newly buxom Mama posed for Glamor Shots with an eye to the future, and her spending diversified beyond implants and horses.

She invested with hairdressers Perry and Terry in a startup florist business after a trip to Disney. Perhaps they twisted Mama’s arm; she’d returned with it in a cast.

The “Flower Pot” closed within 70 days. Seemed none of them knew or cared about actual floral work.

Next, she purchased an audacious ring in Miami, which we dubbed the Super Bowl ring.

Mama invested, then leapt out, taking a drubbing. “I’m not cut out for the stock market,” she frowned.

I inquired about her horse with no name. “Oh, I don’t know where it is,” she waved, sunlight setting her ring ablaze.

“You don’t know where it is?”

“Eddie’s taking care of it,” she said. “Somewhere. I’m not really a horse person.”

As it turned out, Eddie and Linda were over; Linda had reconciled with her husband.

Mama’s bank account dwindled . . . a missing horse . . . bad stocks . . . an empty Flower Pot. She began working at a consignment shop, easily affording new outfits every day.

Mama never looked better.

When Daddy died of a heart attack at 61, Mama sat with me all night as I sobbed.

“Your Daddy brought me a mess of collard greens a week ago,” she confided. “I sort of think he wanted us to get back together.”

I know he did, I gurgled through Tammy Faye-ugly tears.

Mama bought an extravagant spray of roses for his coffin.

Daddy had left her $10,000 to buy a diamond.

In death as in life, everything — and nothing — was resolved. OH