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The String Divorce

By

RD Larson

Mama loves to dance. She can waltz and fox trot. She can do the rumba, the polka and the Texas two-step. Pop likes to watch her dance. He isn't too keen on dancing but he always says Mama is a pleasure to watch when she's dancing. There isn't any dance Mama can't do if she just sees someone else do it once.

Pop often takes us all to the Grange dances out at Blue Lake. There are no baby-sitters for us. I like to watch Mama dance, too. After about three dances, I kind of stop watching. It's a big time for us when we go out to a dance at the Grange Hall.

Mama had to know a week or so before they go dancing because she had to decide what she's going to wear. Sometimes she makes a dress or changes an old dress by putting a collar on it or taking off the sleeves. She paints her fingernails "fire engine red" and wears her girdle. Pop just wears a plaid shirt and calls it good.

The Saturday of the dance we have a big, heavy meal early in the evening. Mama thinks it's not good to dance on a full stomach so she never eats much. After dinner, Pop puts blankets and food and games in the car.

While Pop is getting the car ready, Mama puts on her eyes.First, she cuts fake eyelashes off of a thread of eyelashes that she orders from a catalog. She cuts off six clumps. Then, she licks each one and bends it over a pencil tip. She put a drop of glue on the first clump. Tilting her head way back so I could see up her nose, she sticks it smack in the middle of all of her other eyelashes on her upper lid while she looks in her dresser mirror. She does that with two more lumps. Then she does the other eye. Then she gets her mascara in its tiny box and mixes it with water until it's a paste. She paints her eyelashes .........