Naked Almost Always Gets Attention

My daughter really needs a blog of her own, but of course, she’s too busy living life to write about it. Maybe when she slows down a bit, in 40 or 50 years, but I’m not even sure that will be long enough. Our morning phone calls always have very loud intellectual arguments going on in the background, but I did get the dates for her visit home, November 18 to 25.

“Would you book those tickets for me please Mom?” By book she means pay for, but it’s a small fee for the exhilarating whirlwind of her presence for a few days. She fills me in on her exciting life, no time to talk really, must run, but then she mentions casually that she was naked on stage in a London West End theater.

“What” I say, my interest peaked?

“Oh, you know, it was Phil’s show, The Naked Racist. It’s all about peace and love and anti-war protest.” Phil is her former housemate and known to both of us.

“And you were completely naked,” I say in the most non-judgmental mom voice I can summon.
“Yup, aren’t you proud of me Mom”, she jokes.

Our conversation ends all too soon with the usual promise of a really long talk at some mythical time in the future. She hates talking on the phone because for her it’s like being blind. She gets most of what people are telling her from body language and facial expressions. I know that, and I also know my baby is long gone from me. I get off the phone and google the Garrick Theater where Phil is playing. Established in 1889 it says, located at Charing Cross Road near Trafalgar Square, and seats 675. I roll it over in my mind, a sold out house of 675 people. My girl thinks I am beyond being shocked by her antics, but I keep thinking of the first time I saw her naked, lying in a bassinette in the hospital nursery. She had no protest at being plunged from the warm dark womb into a world of light and action. She lay quiet and awestruck, like one who had finally come down where she meant to be. She was the driven one of my three, and had her life planned from cradle to grave by the time she was 9. This London lifestyle and the failure of her struck-by-lightening marriage have put those plans on hold for the duration. I have no shame for her showing off her perfect young body, but her recklessness does take my breath at times. I will say it here, but never to her. She must find her own way home and I must wait, keeping my impatience to myself and loving her unconditionally.