I chided, “Seems to me like you’ve been alone for a while, well except for getting treated like shit and having your ass beat by Joe.”
Then I begged her, “Mama, I love you and I believe in you. You’ve gotta take control of your life. You look miserable. You must feel miserable. Please, please , please do something about it. First of all you need to quit drinking. Then you need to get into an exercise program. And you really need to find someone to talk to about all of this stuff.”
She started crying and gave me a hug.
I told her, ” I really do care and I would do anything to help you.”
She said, “Hearing you say that you care means the world to me and I will try to stop drinking even though it will be hard.”
I really wanted to help, “Maybe we can start on a light exercise routine in the morning. You should just get as much rest as possible to keep you mind off drinking. ”
So she listened and went upstairs to sleep and that was the last time I saw her until the next morning.
It was Saturday and I was already awake and ready to go workout when she came downstairs at 9 a.m.
I asked, “Are you ready to go workout?”
She protested a little saying, “I am really tired. I think we should put this off a few days.”
“Mama, this will make you feel a lot better. You’ll have a lot more energy in the long run. Besides what else do you have to do today? ”
She shrugged, turned around, went back upstairs, put some warm-ups on, and was back downstairs a few minutes later. Now let me say that in no way did I have any erotic feelings about my mother at this time. She in no way looked sexy to me. She was 5 foot 5 and weighed about 160 pounds. She was only 37 years old, but she looked old for that age. She looked stressed all the time and didn’t have any color in her skin. It would take a lot of hard work for her to get back in shape.
We went downstairs and I got her to start doing some stretches. Then we ran around the pool, but she could only run for a few minutes at a time. I had to dog her some to get her to keep going, but I didn’t push her to hard — because I didn’t want her to give up. I told her that we would alternate between cardio workouts and strength training every other day.
The first few days it was hard to get her started, but true to her word she did stop drinking and I did notice that she had started taking some interest in life again. She started getting my sisters back in line and the house was neater than it had been. She had gone back to work and her job seemed to be going very well. Her boss told her how valuable she was to the company and gave her a bonus. This enabled her to meet the payments on the house and have extra money to spend. She also took more interest in me. We grew a lot closer and spent more and more time together.
I have always been a homebody — unlike my gypsy sisters. Mom would continually thank me for helping her out of her rut. She told me that she didn’t know what she would have done if I hadn’t helped her. Every Saturday she would fix us both a good meal and then we would watch a good movie on the TV. She would always ask me why I wasn’t out on a date with one of the girls at school. I would tell her that I didn’t want her to be lonely and that I enjoyed her company. She would then proceed to tell me how sweet and wonderful I was. She started giving me a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night before going to bed. It may have been my imagination, but I was feeling that those kisses were becoming more and more amorous over time.