Posted by Duff

Yesterday, I popped on an episode of The Dervish’s favorite TV show so I could go get dressed by myself.

I’m not embarrassed by my body — My body and I, we have an understanding. I respect it for what it has done for me , what it continues to do without any help from me, bless it.

Luckily, I have considerably less  (if any) shame since who-knows-just-how many saw me giving birth and 2.5 years of  velcro Dervish, but I was just in the mood for a moment alone, for my body and its second trimester reshaping to belong to me. Well, me and MC.  

See, The Dervish has gotten quite honest as of late. I know she loves me (probably more than anyone else ever has), she just doesn’t know how to be dainty about her observations. I know this phase is going to get worse before it gets better, and her surveillance will extend to strangers, in public, without warning. Help me.

One foot into my pants, I heard telltale feet padding along the hardwood.

“Hi!” announced The Dervish. (It’s always a proclamation as well as a greeting).

“Hi Honey,” I replied, caught.  So much for TV.

“I see your nipples,”  she commentated.

I snatched my bra off the bed, mercifully, before she did.

“Yes,”  I said. There wasn’t much else to say.

The Dervish discovered her own nipples a couple of months ago, just seconds before she declared she was going to take them off.

I had to tell her that’s not something we typically do. Though after she noticed mine (Second Trimester Nipples = Hard to Miss), I could understand the impulse.

I was only slightly older than The Dervish myself when I was banished from bathroom time with my father after I likened a part of his anatomy to a member of the fungi kingdom.

Somewhere, in the great beyond, my father is laughing at me. This one has been a long time coming.