Water Balloons

   My parents were in their twenties and still full of a youthful lust for fun when I was a small child, so it was with some regularity my sister and I were dropped off at Grandma's on Saturday nights.

   Grandma was always kind to us, letting us help bake cookies and lick the batter from the beaters, playing Yahtzee or Cooties with us, or popping us popcorn on the stove top to crunch on during the Saturday night programs – with a whole bottle of Pepsi mind you.

   On Sunday morning we would buckle on our patent leather shoes, and she would take us to church and let us doodle on the church programs and suck on Certs mints or butterscotch candies.

   Life at Grandma's was pleasant, tranquil. Nothing to disturb the mind of a five-year-old. Almost nothing.

   There was only one bathroom in Grandma's house, and on plenty of occasions, Grandma would take her bath and I would fritter away, playing on the bathroom floor, waiting for her to be done. I had seen my mother's breasts. Round like the top of a snow cone. But Grandma's breasts were another story.

   In her fifties then, Grandma wasn't obese, but she had a belly. Her breasts draped themselves atop her belly like the floppy ears of a basset hound. They looked like water balloons being held by the lip, stretching the necks beyond their capacity, all the weight of them amassing in bulbous blobs at the bottom. She had to pick them up and wash under them.

   This filled me with awe and alarm. Having not yet learned about gravity, I wondered how breasts could get into such a slump? Why were they on such a slippery slope? Had Grandma accidentally caught them under her iron and flattened them out that way?

   Thanks for the mammaries. Through the years, I've tried to erase the visual of Grandma's distended bosom. To pretend I didn't see it. To ignore the tendencies of heredity.

   Drying off after a shower recently, something in the partially fogged mirror caught my eye. There was no face visible in the mist, but below where a face should have been two water balloons reflected back at me. Grandma? Wait, what?

   Lifting my breasts to dry underneath, the gravity of the situation was obvious. It took no stretch of the imagination to see what had transpired. Cleavage had turned to leavage. The rubber had hit the road.

   I suppose I should be distressed by this revelation of the arrival of my old age. But if saggy mammaries can produce such firm and fond memories, I'll celebrate being doused by water balloons.