Day 3: Provocation and "The Other Mother"

Ann-Marie:

"Provocative" according to Merriam Webster...serving or tending to provoke, excite or stimulate. 

Pretty much describes a recent word string I wrote about holiday activities associated with the month of December: "What's not to love about a month of stealing kisses under mistletoe, spending time in the kitchen making nog and ramping up the naughty or nice meter! And then there are the elves doing everything other than sitting on shelves."

I relished the response by Bryne's husband in Chapter 9 when she promised that she would behave on her tour with The Sara Mildred Strauss Dancers. (Readers will have to grasp that at a time when great hardship befell the country, Bryne was able to secure employment as a dancer that paid well, gave her husband the freedom to pursue writing a novel and support her parents~handsomely paid for wearing next to nothing). He told her "...Be brazen. Be bold. Be burlesque!" It's in this chapter called "Taking Turns" that the reader realizes that to follow their passion (Byrne and Miller) was as much about the individual pursuit as it was celebrating the other's attributes.  Which becomes even more meaningful when the chapter ends with a decision by one of them to relinquish "a turn" to benefit the other.

Passion, bold, and brazen (as well as compassionately human). I do think Byrne and I would have enjoyed each other's company.

Teresa:

Are you kidding? Byrne Miller would have eaten you up ~ she was a snob about language and you're a writer. Major points right away. Plus she claimed to love my cooking and I'm not half the foodie you are. So we're defacto sisters by Bryne.

Provocation was a game to Byrne. she enjoyed, shall we say, surprising people. Personally I'm always attracted to larger-than-life personalities so her most outrageous pronouncements seemed like performances. Remember, I was 22 when she dropped such womenism bombs like "every woman should have a at least one affair. It builds confidence" and "modesty is for the hoi polloi." I didn't even know what that last one meant.

It was only later, when I started to list them all for "The Other Mother: a rememoir" that I realized Bryne's womenisms were an expression of love for her collected daughters. She meant for each of us to live the fullest lives we could and never settle. If a husband or a boyfriend wasn't up to the potential she saw in us, she had no use for them. She knew we could do better but instead of criticizing our choices, like regular mothers do, she'd tell us "mediocrity is distasteful" and "there is no contract on earth that cannot be rewritten."

She did shock me though, when friends threw me a going away party when I left Beaufort for a new career in Washington D.C. She raised her glass of red wine for a toast to the possibilities a big city would offer. Only she said it this way: "Anonymity has its own rewards. You can be trashy and nobody will ever know."

The Other Mother: A Rememoir by Teresa Bruce

Tell us about a provocative moment in your life...