My mother, Mary Hogan, attended an all girls Catholic high school, Dominican Commercial, in Queens, New York in the 1940s.
H-a-t-i-n-g (and my mother didn't hate much) her school uniform, she lived for the summers, when she tossed out the woolen, pleated, holy plaid and settled in for the summer at the family beach bungalow.
I wished she would have saved those lucscious swimsuits. She wore them just as they wore her. In fact it's hard (poetically speaking) to say where my mother's skin ended and the swimsuit material began! These were her selkie skins. In them she glistened in the water, glittered in the sun as if in a gleeful, sensual prayer. She wouldn't be one to ruminate on such things. Being her daughter, I read into the photos, and I know.
Fast forward 30 years. Mary Hogan Conlon poses in our backyard in southern California. It's summer. She's back in her swimsuit with that same toothy smile. I'm 12 years of age, too embarrassed to don a bathing suit for a camera, and far from the world of selkies where women smile in the ocean, gliding in their summer homes.
It's one day after Mother's Day.
Mom, Mary Hogan Conlon, (1927-2000), I know you rest in peace. Now that it's nearly summer, I close my eyes and see you in your suit, hoping you swim in peace, as well.
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