A List of Things That Have Seen Me Naked

• The stuff in my fridge
• Page 42 of Parenting magazine (actually, that just saw me topless)
• The carwash on 287
• My crappy fan
• The shower curtain at the Sheraton

I mean, that's obviously an incomplete list. And this is obviously a topic that doesn't have wings. But it made you open this post, didn't it? I have to give full credit to Ricka (allthatscintillates.blogspot.com). When we were talking about starting blogs, she suggested this as a possible post and I couldn't resist her brilliance. I've got a new FB page for Life As a Pearl (please like it!). If you were feeling awesome, you could go there and post a comment with something that's seen you naked. Make me laugh.

Ok, enough fun. There's nothing funny about nudity. Except for the time my elderly next door neighbor asked if she could garden topless if she got her breasts removed. That was funny. If it were up to me, Florence could have skipped the mastectomy and just gone for it. But for whatever reason, lawmakers have yet to consult me on indecent exposure laws.

In a tragic irony, a few years after Florence posed that question, she developed breast cancer. She was the healthiest person I ever knew. Healthy in the way that made you dread meals at her house because the meatloaf would actually be made of flaxseed and barley, and the cake was all carob and agave nectar and sunflower seeds. She loved her body in a genuine, pure way. But her body didn't love her back.

I never did see Florence garden without her shirt on--I was grown and gone by the time she started and finished her fight. But I like to think she did. In my mind, I see her wandering between the rows of tomatoes, her head, chest and feet bare as the day she was born. 

People say they don't like to remember their loved ones how they look when they're ill; but Florence was a lovely, dignified woman--with or without breasts. I choose to picture the woman whose body has been stripped because it makes it easier to see inside. Inside, Florence was funny. She was a rebel. She juiced things that shouldn't have been juiced. She dyed her hair a few years longer than she should have. She got altitude sickness and she played one hell of a game of nurts. And for a girl without much in the way of grandparents, she was the perfect grandma living right next door.

I don't know why we just went there. This promised to be a funny blog, and I didn't quite deliver. But please, don't hesitate to have a little chuckle if you drive by Florence's house and see the faint shadow of a topless woman in the cornstalks. If you take a moment to listen, you'll hear her laughing too. (At my mom's shorts. She's definitely laughing at those shorts.)