To Be Vivacious

is a sin, apparently.

Mom told me, with some disdain, that a man had referred to her recently as "vivacious". She is a woman of a certain age and he was a man of a certain age, so there was probably subtext there. However the real subtext is not to be identified with her mother, who was a vivacious woman who lacked in mothering skills. Wore expensive hats but didn't believe in taking her children to the dentist. Wouldn't get her daughter glasses because she didn't want to be the mother of a glasses-wearing child. That sort of thing.

I would say I got lucky in the mom department. She doesn't make me call her "mother", and once she saw that other people liked her vivacious children, she didn't worry about their vivaciousness as much.

Her own, on the other hand...