Girls just wanna have fun.

A mullet and a shag. God help us.

Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself for bad hair choices. In my defense, I must say that it was the Eighties and mullets were practically mandatory in my circle of local rock legends. I also was responsible for Lucia’s shag.

Mea culpa.

The difference is, I paid big bucks for my haircut (sheared by the lead singer of my favorite band) and Lucia’s was free. Yes, I admit it. I gave her the haircut. And the perm.

Mea maxima culpa.

But forget the haircuts for a moment. Isn’t this a totally sweet mother-daughter photo? Lucia and I have been resting our heads on each other’s shoulders and smiling as big as the sky for as long as I can remember. We’ve had our share of nasty spats, but we’ve always been each other’s security blanket, through good haircuts and bad.

I love to hear you say that.

Whenever I see Lucia, I always tell her how much I love her — and she generally says something like, “I love you more” or “I love you too; you’ll never know how much.” Yesterday she added a new twist that was so sweet it made me smile all day.

I gave her a manicure, trimmed her nails and painted them the same light-pink color as mine. She kept saying how much she loved it and how she bet her Mama never got such a nice manicure.

I told her it was really fun doing it for her because I love her so much. She turned to give me a smooch and said, “I love you too, so much.” Then she paused for a moment and told me:

“I love to hear you say that.”

Sometimes life is really, really good.

Tempus fugit

It has been a year and a half since these photos were taken (Christmas 2007). Lucia was living at the überfancy Stratford in Lafayette at the time. It was a brand new assisted living residence that was more like a luxury hotel than home. They had a fancy chef, a couple of salons, a gym, their own movie theater and a lot of other perks.  They treated Lucia like royalty, but she’s a little too country for the whole cruise-ship ambience.

After a couple of major health setbacks —that had nothing to do with living at the Stratford but nevertheless landed her in the hospital—she moved to the wonderful Williams Family Care home, where she still lives as of now.  But she lost a lot of weight along the way (she now weighs 92 pounds) and she no longer is willing to wear her false teeth, so she looks really different.

Seeing these photos really makes that evident. (I ran across them while deleting extra stuff from my digital camera.)

Yes, time flees. Or flies. Depending on how you see it.

The star of Starbucks

Lucia hasn’t been feeling up to snuff lately, but today she was delighted to get in the car, ride over to Starbuck’s, and sit outside in the sun with a cheese Danish and a good cup of coffee.

It was a lazy, mellow afternoon. Just the kind you want in the middle of summer.