I had been waiting for this day for two long years. Today Ryan was coming home, and I wanted to look my total best. He’d been gone for two years, most of that time spent in school, he had applied and been accepted into Oxford, the famed University in England. And because of the rigors of his study and the cost of returning home being rather cost prohibitive, we had not seen each other for those two long years.
We had corresponded regularly by e-mail and Skyped occasionally, but I missed my baby boy so much… But the distance between us lessened when he wrote in his emails his feelings for me. He never failed to tell me how much he loved me and missed me, and even though he liked what he was doing, he couldn’t wait to get back home and see me again.
He often said things like, “I miss you with all of my heart,” and, “I think about you all the time.” He called me “sweetheart” and “beautiful,” and said that he had proudly displayed a framed picture of me in his dorm room.
Once, according to an email I’d received just two months before he came home, some guy named Richard had asked for my “digits”, so he could look me up next time he was stateside. Ryan had responded, “She’s all mine!” I thought it an odd twist of phrase, but chalked it up to him defending his mother’s honor.
“After that,” Ryan wrote me, “everybody started referring to you as ‘my girl’.”
We talked of our longing to see each other again. It became pretty mushy in the final days before he started home. I began thinking of those final messages and my feelings for my son; “Silly,” I told myself as I finally settled on a pair of jeans and a tank-top, pulling them off their hangers and onto my body. “Silly and romantic.”
I closed the closet door and looked at myself in my full length mirror. I wasn’t a raving beauty, but at forty years old I could admit that I was pretty. I had shoulder length brown hair that I wore in a ponytail, and large brown eyes, and a fair complexion. I had a decent body too, slim and curvy where it matters, although if I had my way I’d be a couple pounds lighter. All in all, I supposed I wasn’t too hard to look at. I found myself hoping Ryan would think so too.
I inspected myself in the mirror again, checking the fit. The clothes were a little snug, accentuating every curve and contour, but they didn’t make me look fat anywhere. Next I put on my shoes.
I decided to take off my bra and when I checked the look once more I liked what I saw. I have nice boobs, full and round and firm, not a bit of sag, but still, I wasn’t sure if I should be walking around showing them off so much. A lady was supposed to be modest. And it wasn’t exactly appropriate to be showing them off to Ryan like that. But then again, I told myself as I studied my boobs in the mirror, if I was totally honest I had to admit that it excited me to show them off to Ryan.
“More silliness,” I said to my reflection. I put the bra back on , rechecked my face and my hair, made sure everything was okay, then turned and left my bedroom, on my way to welcome my darling son home from school.