Free Area Woman Blows Gasket by Patricia Pearson Page A

of without needing a language that can be so dangerously appropriated.
    A child's bodily integrity is not at stake in a mother's embrace, but that doesn't mean that hugging your daughter is the
     same as hugging a friend. It is more intense and lovely and delicious. It also ends— at about the point when daughters make
     mothers walk five paces behind them in public so as not to be embarrassed in front of their friends.
    Then it is probably time for a midlife crisis. Not the best path to tread, this celebration of the tender-erotic. Better—
     surely?— to insist upon our sexual vibrancy as women all along, to allow ourselves to be viewed as Madonna rather than as
     madonnas, as, if anything, more beautiful because of motherhood. I deserve to recognize a man's gaze in a crowded kid's museum
     for what it is, admiring, and take some sustenance from that.

Penises and Pryin' Eyes
    I was sitting at the marina near my old cottage last summer, dumbly engrossed in a novel, when a woman came up to me and declared
     with great umbrage: "He is peeing in the LAKE."
    I looked up slowly— the way you do when it dawns on you that the ambient sound of someone blurting gibberish is actually addressed
     to you personally— and saw a sixtyish woman with smoker's wrinkles, sporting hot pants and carrying a dachshund, staring down
     at me and smiling very tightly.
    "Oh, I'm sorry," I said, uncertainly. I assumed that she was referring to my dog. It is a well-known fact in North America
     that dogs can relieve themselves only in the one place— parks— where people like to sit, picnic, and go barefoot, usually
     slipping on smears of dog shit. Otherwise, dogs' needs are a constant embarrassment to the owner, as the dogs heedlessly urinate
     in lakes, on marigolds, against car tires and recycling boxes, into leaf piles, and alongside hedges belonging to cat owners.
     God forbid that dogs should defecate on the ground when you don't have a bag, because then you just have to perish from self-consciousness
     on the spot. It's the rule.
    I readied myself to argue with this hectoring woman, but then I suddenly remembered that I didn't have my dog with me at the
     marina. Confused, I followed the limp, disdainful wave of her arm as she pointed across the docks, and realized that she was
     talking about my son.
    Ohhhh, I nodded. Right. There was my son, naked, as is his wont, ever since he was busted loose from diapers and snow pants
     and the restrictions of the city. He was playing on a strip of sand near some boats and had evidently just executed an exciting
     arc of piss into the shallows.
    I smiled apologetically. "Accidents happen at that age, you know. He doesn't always remember to come to me in time."
    Of course, I knew that Geoffrey had peed in the lake deliberately, bending his knees and thrusting his pelvis forward in great
     I-love-my-penis glee, because that is what he's into these halcyon days of summer, and I don't care. Male friends have murmured
     admiringly to me about Geoffrey's penis-waggling because they were taught shame. If only they had had a bookish absentminded
     mother who found nudity easier to deal with, frankly, than chasing a boy around and around the house attempting to clothe
     him, they tell me. Imagine their sexual confidence then!
    If truth be told, I wasn't aware of this masculine evolution of the self, but still I intuitively agreed with my friends.
     I think Geoffrey's innocent happiness about his penis-gadget is touching and amusing to watch. But not so. The woman's prim,
     perturbed expression suggested that my explanation had not appeased her. "He needs to be in a diaper," she said.
    "I can't put him in a diaper," I protested, aroused. "He's over three years old."
    "Then make him wear a swimsuit," she countered.
    Now my faced flushed. I put my novel down and got to my feet. "Are you suggesting that small children in swimsuits don't pee
     in the lake? You don't think your granddaughter pees in the lake