Hemming and He-hawing

A good daughter goes to visit her parents for myriad reasons - to help out around the house, to hear how their lives are going, to enjoy meals and conversation with them.

I go to laugh.

Let me set the scene for you: Within minutes of walking in the door, I am up on a step stool removing curtains from the three windows in the breakfast room. The intent is to cut off most of the fabric and make valances out of them. I have come to hem.

The only logical place to cut these large pieces of fabric is the kitchen floor, so I'm down there measuring and marking so I can cut while Mom sits at a chair at the breakfast table watching me. I reach for the scissors to start cutting.

"Do you think you'll ever get married again?" she asks apropos of nothing.

I look up at her, confused. "I don't know, Mom. Why?"

Without missing a beat, she replies, "I'd like to think you'll be taken care of before I shuffle off this mortal coil."

The laughter erupts out of me sometime around "shuffle" and is in full force by the time she gets to "coil." I drop the tape measure I'm laughing so hard. She begins laughing, too.

Dropping the scissors, I lean against the nearest cabinet, telling her that I want to savor this moment when I was sitting on the kitchen floor cutting curtains and she brings up her concerns about me being a spinster. All, I might add, within 15 minutes of my arrival.

Now she's laughing so hard tears are running down her cheeks while I'm bent over double with laughter.

Dad walks in the swinging door from the dining room, peering down at the two of us lost in a laugh attack. "What's afoot here?" he wants to know.

When I sputter out how Mom can't shuffle off her mortal coil because I'm still single, he raises an eyebrow and reminds me, "Your mother is very funny." Then he leaves for the family room and his chair, Post crossword puzzle in hand.

My mother isn't just funny, she's hilarious. An hour and a half is nothing to drive for that kind of shared laughter.

Best Mom ever.