Chapter 1

Mom picked me up from the airport when I returned from my first year in college. I almost didn’t recognize her, she had lost so much weight. Upon closer examination in the car on the way home, I realized she hadn’t lost a lot of weight so much as reconfigured, or restored, her body’s natural curves.

Her arms were slimmer and sufficiently toned to highlight the muscles above her elbow, evidence of a regular if not strenuous workout, and the sleeveless dress worn in the cool air showed she was no longer afraid to show a little skin.

Mom’s breasts seemed larger. I couldn’t remember noticing them before but they were definitely noteworthy now if only because of their prominence over a waistline that was narrower than I remembered. That observation jarred me. Not the revelation itself so much as the noting of it, seeing my mother as an attractive woman.

And her legs. Gosh. Mom had legs, just as tanned as her arms and it wasn’t yet summer. In fact, such a tan even in late spring indicated she had lost her shyness some time ago. This observation triggered the memory of her walking toward me, the muscles in her legs flexing differently depending on which part of her stride they were currently engaged in, like her arms, reflecting the light or not the way only exercised specimens could. That, though unconscious at the time, was my first observation of Mom the woman.

Yes, my once plumpish Mom was fit and trim, and much more lively than the worried woman that had bade me goodbye last fall and the sullen mother I had spoken by phone at Xmas. It wasn’t just her joyous enthusiasm in welcoming her only son home. She exuded a bubbly energy I was sure would still surround her in my absence, that was more like my mom of yesteryear and hinted of the woman my father knew in his youth.

Mom was aware of my surprise and admiring glances.

“So, what do you think of the new me?” Mom released the wheel with her right hand and swept it from her chest to her knee.

I stumbled on my words and failed to produce an intelligible sound.

Mom laughed. “I’ve been working out and eating differently,” she explained.

“What brought that on?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Things.”

Mom’s cheery demeanor briefly flattened but returned when she changed the subject a moment later. However, as we turned into our subdivision, Mom’s disposition dulled with each block until we pulled into our driveway.

“Go say hi to your father while I put the car in the garage. You can get your bags later.”

I did as Mom said. Dad was glad to see me but there was something off about him, like he was on edge about something. I spent the rest of that late Friday afternoon in asynchronous visits with my parents. Strangely, they were never together in the same room for more than a few minutes. One would always leave shortly after the conversation shifted between me and one to me and the other. They never engaged each other directly. By supper time I knew there was something definitely wrong. After dinner, I joined my father in the living room while Mom cleaned up in the kitchen.

“You can relax on your first night home,” Mom had refused my help. “Why don’t you go visit with your father?”

It was a command, not a question, so I repaired to the living room to watch sports with my dad. It was only then that I noticed that the TV, the whole entertainment cabinet in fact, had been moved to the end wall, replaced by the love seat and two end tables that had previously occupied that spot. I sat on the couch, near Dad, and looked for the remote that was always present on the table between his big chair and the couch.

“What happened to the TV?” I asked, looking from the love seat to the TV placed awkwardly for viewing along the far end wall, shutters closed so it couldn’t be seen anyway.

Dad didn’t even look up from the book he was reading.

“Your mother thought we should talk more or enrich ourselves with more cultured activities, like reading, instead of watching mindless things like football or baseball.”

I was stunned! Dad was an avid fan of football and baseball, and all things sports. He would even watch golf or a fishing show if nothing else was on. Yet, he seemed resigned to his fate. I couldn’t detect the tiniest shred of bitterness or resentment in his tone.

“We watch a DVD on Saturdays,” Mom chimed in, calling from the kitchen.

I fiddled about for a few minutes, picking up and flipping through some of the magazines stacked on the shelf under the end table. They were all women’s magazines.

“You’re in my spot,” Mom said, emerging from the kitchen and walking directly to where I was sitting.

I thought she was kidding but Mom stood in front of me waiting for me to move. Mom sat down as soon as I vacated the seat.

“You don’t have to go,” she said as I moved right around the coffee table.

“That’s ok. I’ll sit on the loveseat,” I replied.

I picked up the remote from the open shelf under the TV and opened the shutters before flopping on the loveseat, feet up and leaning against the far end, facing the TV.

“We don’t watch TV anymore,” Mom said, adding, “except for a movie once in a while.”

I ignored her and turned the TV on, displaying the list of movies. I picked one and tried it but was rewarded only with a subscription notice. I tried another and another with the same result.

“What happened to all the channels?” I asked.

“Your mother canceled everything but the basic service,” Dad muttered, still not looking up from his book.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Mom snapped.

Dad didn’t answer. I was shocked again. What happened to my Joe-man father, the dominant player in a relationship that started in high school?

I gave up after a few more tries and shut the TV off. I looked at my parents, sitting near but ignoring each other. Mom flipped through magazines and Dad studiously read his book though I could tell he was annoyed by the rattling of her pages.

Mom’s stockinged feet were stretched out straight onto the coffee table and she held a magazine flat on her lap. She was looking intently at each page as she flipped through but wasn’t spending enough time to be truly engaged by anything she saw. She appeared so unlike the woman that drove me home. I took advantage of each parent’s exaggerated concentration to re-examine Mom’s figure, the other thing that was new.

As I noted on the way home, it wasn’t just Mom’s arms that were more sculptured. Her legs, even covered in nylons and lying flat on the table, were clearly more streamlined than before. Even through the hose, I could see more shapely calves and slender thighs that no longer bulged widely like they once did when she sat down. I couldn’t see much of her narrower waist but her breasts were quite noticeable, especially when her arms moved to change pages, jostling the targets of my gaze and producing a rippling effect in her dress, not to mention an aftershock in my mind after every casual flip.

My eyes ranged higher and I realized with another shock that she had cut her hair short in a very cute, modern style that emphasized the length and grace of her neck as it curved out to form her shoulders. The unkempt, shoulder length hair was gone. How had I not noticed that until now?

I finished with a final, shocking observation: Mom is a very sexy woman!

How could my father ignore her? Why wasn’t he trying to get rid of me so he could take her to bed? She had obviously gone to great effort to change her looks. What was the matter with him?

“You can watch a movie if you want to, sweetie,” Mom quietly suggested. She raised her eyes to meet mine and I looked back and smiled engagingly.

“That’s ok,” I said. “I’ll finish the book I was reading on the plane.”

Mom nodded and continued flipping pages. Dad ignored the exchange completely. I went out to the car and got my book which I’d left on the seat. Nothing had changed when I got back. I sat down and started reading, leaning back against the arm of the love seat with my feet propped against the far end. I looked over at my parents when I changed pages in the stultifying silence.

They hadn’t moved. Except, Mom had pulled her knees up and braced her feet against the coffee table. The only remarkable thing about this change was the angle of her legs, demurely held together all the way to her stockinged feet. Mom had twisted slightly to fit her back into the corner of the couch, allowing her to face at a slight angle away from my father but not so far that she couldn’t brace her feet on the table to keep her knees up. She hadn’t turned her back on him but her posture still registered disengagement. Dad had similarly twisted slightly the other way, keeping his book firmly on his right thigh, the one farthest away from Mom.

I looked back at the sight that had first caught my attention. Mom’s feet were positioned off-center, slightly to her left on the coffee table from her perspective, leaving a nice side view of her right leg, including the underside of her thigh. I could now see she was wearing individual nylons rather than pantyhose as I had assumed without really thinking about it. Somehow, this was more than mildly arousing, mother or not.

Mom’s sleeveless summer dress had a loose skirt and, though the front of the hem was piously pinched between the magazine and Mom’s leg almost up to her knees, holding it in place, the back had fallen almost to the cushion. Not enough for me to make see Mom’s panties, but sufficiently far for my mind to excitedly register their near presence.

Something stirred below in the engine of my young manhood. I kept staring until my head jerked with the realization of what I was doing. Quickly, I turned back to my book but my gaze slowly strayed back to run up and down the backs of those older but youngish looking legs. I’d seen more before, on women with much shorter skirts, so why was this so arousing?

I kept glancing back at my book and staring under Mom’s dress until she threw the magazine onto the table, the sharp sound jolting my gaze back into my book. After Mom selected another, I repositioned myself, propping a cushion under by side and draping my arm over the arm of the loveseat. Lying on my side like this, I could hold my book in front of me, directly in line of sight with Mom’s sexy legs, as it turned out.

My first tentative peek above the pages immediately registered that Mom’s upper hem had slipped an inch or two lower which dropped the lower hem, exposing more of her thighs. Enough, I happily noted, that I could make out the faint presence of lightly colored panties in the dim light under Mom’s skirt. I stiffened sufficiently in my jeans to cause discomfort and though I rebuked myself, my eyes strained to see more.

I was sporting a full hard-on when Mom surprised me by lifting her feet off the coffee table and swinging them onto the couch when she changed to a more comfortable position resting against the arm of the couch, back toward my father. Luckily, she didn’t look my way for I didn’t have time to react and would have been caught staring under her dress.

I was disappointed now that I couldn’t see the underside of Mom’s thighs but I regained a little enthusiasm when I noticed Mom’s dress slowly slipping lower and lower, or should I say higher and higher, on her thighs. Within minutes, the skirt was piled across Mom’s thighs, almost down to her hips, baring most of her leg.

I almost came when Mom’s hand left the magazine to idly scratch the side of her knee, then absently drifted lower, gently scratching the bottom of the nylon almost as an afterthought, until it reached the darker band near the soft flesh of her bare leg. Mom’s hand returned to flip a page, then returned to her knee and quickly slid down to the top of the nylon where her fingers toyed with the edge before slipping lower to touch her bare skin.

I thought my boner would break with an audible snap when Mom’s fingers casually stroked down her thigh until her hand met the cushion, paused, and returned to the nylon’s edge, dragging her caressing fingers behind in a slow, to me teasing, stroke. Pause. Again, the soft caress down the underside of her thigh and then back. Again and again. My cock was throbbing in tingling, sensual pain.

Was I mistaken? I looked closer. No.

Mom’s hand had slipped further under her leg, allowing her fingers to stretch in to touch the softest skin of her leg, the inside of her thigh. My mouth was dry. I could feel cracks forming in my lips. Several times, Mom’s hand rose to turn the pages of her magazine but each time it returned directly to the bare skin underneath her upper thigh to resume its erotic caress.

Mom’s hand left again. I waited for the sound of a flipping page that would signal its imminent return but it didn’t arrive. I looked up. Mom was smiling at me, her face seeming abnormally soft and lush.

“Boring book?” she asked softly.

“Uh, yeah,” I stammered, blushing.

“You can watch a movie if you want.”

I shook my head.

“Would you like some tea or hot chocolate?”

“No thanks.” My face was definitely flushed. I wished I had said yes so I could recover alone.

“Pie?”

“Yeah, sure. That would be great.”

“Ok. Come on, then.”

Mom got up and stepped over to the love seat, holding her hand out to me to grasp. I made a great effort of groaning and thankfully, she gave up and went into the kitchen.