The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: BAR

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann. I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I intend to write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?
Here are January's prompts: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

BAR

<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } </style> <br />--> <div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I don't have any memories from childhood that involve a drinking establishment kind of bar – my parents were teetotalers, though I suspect my father did drink some, just not around us. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have only limited experience with a ballet bar, as I took dance classes when I was wee and did temporarily nurture dreams of toe shoes. One of the best compliments I ever received was that I have a “dancer's neck.” Unfortunately that grace does not extend to my other body parts. Instead, my best party trick is to wow people with the odd angles my double-jointedness creates. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I do, however, have a memory to share related to monkey bars. I was a climber as a child and loved trees, swingsets, slides, merry-go-rounds, you name it. I still enjoy high look-out places and have not experienced that fear of heights my husband suffers from. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I loved playing on the monkey bars at school during recess, and one day, as I was happily atop, I saw my mother walking down the sidewalk. I instantly cringed, not because I was on top of the monkey bars (she encouraged our explorations) but because I wasn't wearing the same clothes I'd gone to school in. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At the time my mom was sewing my clothes, and they were not cool AT ALL, so each morning on the bus I would change into something else. And on this day, I was up on the monkey bars with no way to hide. She noticed right away, and it was a big deal in our relationship and a big moment in me becoming my own person. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My mother wrote me a letter expressing how hurt she was – a letter I still have. I hated disappointing her, but I also didn't want to wear those homemade clothes anymore. After that day, I was able to wear other things to school. It took quite a few more years for me to learn what a gift those homemade clothes had been – what a gift <i>any</i>homemade gift is. Thankfully I've been able to express that to my mother many times since then.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><br />