Practicing Grace

I don't have a lot planned this weekend. I have my baby girl, we're going to learn to crochet now so we'll be really good when we're little old ladies and are supposed to. Then we may go looking at puppies, just because. Probably some shoe shopping and yard work and the book store, all in that order.
But as usual, the weekend exploded. I thought I’d mow the lawn one last time, a really quick one. The back yard took longer than I expected, because I wanted all the pretty zigzag mow marks. I moved to the front.
Crap, Lou was out. I left the lawn mower running, so he would know I was busy, and kept my iPod blaring. I was halfway through when he snuck up behind me, motioning for me to turn off the lawnmower.
But like a good neighbor, I plastered a smile on my face and let it stop.
He began talking. I wondered if he would notice I was listening to the iPod instead. Then I remembered my new mantra. Be graceful to those with lesser brainpower.
So I sighed and pulled the earbuds from my ears.
He hadn’t noticed, and was in the middle of a conversation. “--now, sweetheart. I haven’t asked a woman out in years, you know. I’m a bit nervous… So would you like to go out to dinner?”
“No.”
Behind the glasses that magnify his eyes, he blinks in surprise.
“Why not?”
I could have mentioned he was in his LATE eighties. But he knows that. I could have mentioned he smells. But he knows that also.
And I was still working on my grace.
“I have my child this weekend.”
He wasn’t about to let me have a tactful excuse. “So? The kid can stay alone for an hour.”
I ground my teeth. “But I enjoy my time with my kid. I don’t choose to waste any of it when I have her.”
A wasp flew around his face. I was actually kinda impressed with the way he stayed calm. It buzzed around his mouth, drawing attention to his rather large, false, horse-teeth, upward to his thick eyeglasses.
Suddenly he twitched, as he heard the buzz. In a split second, I realized I shouldn’t have been impressed with what I thought was his zen moment. He wasn’t calm at all, but had a delayed reaction.
He spun his eyeballs around to see what was buzzing. When he realized what it was, he raised his hand to smack it. Unfortunately, he miscalculated (the quadruple-focals are tricky) and smacked himself in the nose on the way to the forehead, which he hit also.
The wasp flew away. Lou tried to act casual, as if he didn’t just bop himself twice.
Then he leaned back, body stance sultry, and I realized he forgot he’d already asked me out and was about to do it all over again. Damn dementia.
Suddenly, a fit of giggles caught me. I coughed into my hand, then cleared my throat. “Why don’t you ask Eddie to go to dinner with you instead?”
He looked astonished that I read his mind in the asking out of dinner. Then a wave of disgust washed over his face. “Awww, I go to dinner with him all the time.”
Eddie is our other neighbor, and lost his wife right before old Lou did. They were currently on the prowl for women.
“Now sweetheart,” he starts again, “I haven’t asked a woman out in years, you know. I’m a bit nervous… So would you like to go out to dinner?”
This time I was more prepared. “No. I have a date already.”
“He’s not black, is he? Bah!” he throws his hand down at me in disgust. “I don’t know why such beautiful women go out with black men!”
Holy crap. My fingers twitch on the lawnmower. I fight the urge to mow him down, though the mental image of bloody body parts flying every which way sends me a perverse sense of glee. Instead, I smile. The gleam of my recently bleached teeth makes him blink in surprise.
“Because size matters,” I whisper slowly and distinctly. “Because once you go black, you never go back. Never, ever let a woman tell you dick size isn’t important. It is. We lie through our teeth. When you pull your pants down and have an average little willie, we fight the urge to laugh. That’s why we lie and try to make you feel better. Silly women are guilty creatures. But then we dump your ass for the luscious guy built like a show-horse.”
“Geeezus!” he mutters, his face white.
I smile wider.
“Mommy!” my child yells from the upstairs window.
“Gotta run,” I say, in the sweetest voice I can muster. I turn and deliberately let my hips sway in a bellydancer walk. I am practicing grace, I chant. Mostly it's guilt, because I don't know how much baby girl heard.
I let the door slam behind me. “Yes, tickle-bug?” I ask the child who resembles me the most.
“You were talking to Lou an awful long time,” she begins tactfully.
Great. The child who resembles me doesn’t need to remind herself of grace, it’s already there. Somewhere in the last twenty years, I’ve lost mine. Suddenly I want her to keep hers.
“Yes.” I refrain from telling her the racist comments, knowing how it instantly fires up my first daughter to the boiling point. I decide I can let my littlest daughter retain her charm. But the anger is still there, under my skin when I say, “The dirty old creeper asked me out again.”
“Mommy,” she chastises gently. “It takes a lot of courage to ask out a woman! What a brave soul!”
I smile, ever so sweetly. “Then you should go out with him.”
She smiles sweetly back, then sighs. “You turned him down again, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was gently,” I share.
Because it was. I didn’t mow him down. There weren’t bloody body parts scattered up and down the block. Bravo for my grace! All the mantra chanting works. I recommend it highly.