Mama's Poems

Pink Tutu

One day at cards

with friends in the room

and argument did ensue.

One friend did state

to end the debate

a way to lighten the mood.

Picture the man across from you

(his size was grand

and clumsy to view)

dancing the room in a pink tutu.

Her imagination did fail

so for the feat to prevail

my father did a pirouette

or two,

And to this day

you cannot say

pink tutu without laughter

filling the room.

My mother didn't actually write this one, but she helped me with every poem I've ever written, so I count it; she was also part of the story behind this poem, which, like the last chapter's poem, happened when I was five years old.

My parents, my late uncle, and my uncle's then-girlfriend were sitting around the table in my house playing a card game called Canasta. The game was the men against the women, and the men were winning. My father was the one who taught my mother how to play, so she was used to him winning and wasn't bothered, but her partner was a sore loser, and throwing a tantrum. My uncle placed his cards face-down on the table, looked her dead in the eye, and told her to "calm down" and picture my father in a pink tutu. My father was five foot eight, two hundred seventy pounds, and had short, curly black hair, blue eyes, a full beard, rotted out front teeth, and a bald spot in the middle of the top of his head. My uncle's girlfriend couldn't picture it, so my father stood up, held his arm above his head like a ballerina, and began twirling around the living room. The adults laughed so loudly that they woke me up (I don't know how my older brother slept through it). I went out to the living room to tell them to quiet down because I had to be up at six thirty for school the next morning, only to find my father twirling around the living room. When I asked him what he was doing, he grinned, said "pirouettes" and twirled again. I couldn't stop laughing for the next three hours, and to this day can't hear the phrase "pink tutu" without at least cracking a smile.