Yesterday after my swim I had a long chat with a woman in the locker room at the Y. Funnily enough, now that I’m working from home, most of my in-person socializing happens déshabillé, dressing or undressing. Which was not on my Apocalypse bingo card, for sure.
Anyway. The entire time I was assembling myself, she was applying lotion, generously, languorously. Honestly, I almost felt like I’d been doing it wrong my whole life. Should I avert my gaze? She sat on a stool, extending first one leg and then the other to prop an elegant and lovely foot on the locker door. There she was in her fire engine red panties and leopard print push-up bra, toes painted, slowly smoothing globs of lotion over every curve—all the while keeping up a friendly banter.
I learned that she’s been with her husband “forever,” and that they only got married after she realized, in her thirties, that she wanted to be a mother. “I hadn’t thought about it before then, but suddenly it was important.” She told him she didn’t expect him to “hang around.” She also wouldn’t “get pregnant on purpose” to trap him. And here she looked me dead in the eye. “I would never do that, like some women.”
But she made it clear to him what she wanted. (Brava!) Her parents came to help her move out of the apartment the weekend he was meant to fly off to California to stay with his brother.
“We had the van half packed when he walked in the door and said, ‘I can’t believe I almost got on that plane.'”
We were talking about weddings because my older son is about to get hitched—our boys are the same age. She’s at least ten years older than I am, as most parents of my sons’ peers are. It was lonely being the young mommy. I appreciated her candor and kindness and stories.
And let me tell you: She is hot.
Everyone we encounter has a story. And perhaps a secret. The next time you’re in the grocery store and see a slim woman, late sixties, with a shy smile and a gap between her front teeth—under the nondescript jeans and top, she might be sporting sexy underthings.
And well she should.