Pretty Woman

Today is Gram's birthday. When visiting her, I asked if she'd watched any good movies lately.

"Well, nothing, really. But I have been wanting to watch Pretty Woman. I can't remember the opera he takes her to."

Mike and I sent Gram a copy of the movie, so she can spend her birthday with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts at La Traviata, an opera about a prostitute who falls in love with a wealthy man. (We're hoping that she and Pop can operate the VCR...)

The days in which Gram stayed up late sewing curtains, and rising early to bake bread, are long gone. But her romantic imagination is alive and well. Her eagerness with this subject always catches me off guard, since she is the wife of a Christian minister. She's never had a drop of alcohol; she's never danced; she's never played cards.

"All you need is a little black nighty, girls," she told my cousins and me, while watching Jerry Maguire some years ago.

"Just walk with your chest out, like this," she told my sister and I once, when she could still go walking on the nature trail by her house. Some elderly men passing by took note.

She's told me, many times, that she is still in love with the man she married over 50 years ago. She's still hoping to be wooed by him.

Happy Birthday, Pretty Woman!