House Coat: 5 Minute Freewrite

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-186-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-house-coat

It was velvet, usually. Quilted. It hung from her rounded shoulders to her ankles and represented everything, in retrospect, that I wanted to run away from. I hadn't thought of her house coat in years, perhaps because it was years since I ran.

When I was younger-- when she was younger-- I'd see the housecoat mostly on Christmas mornings, when lounging was permissible and snuggling ideal. As we both got older, the less she moved, the more she hid behind the shapeless fuzzy sacks with their long plasticky zippers and not even a hint of what lurked underneath. 

Robe. Muu-muu. Caftan. Just the thought made me cringe, until that light-breezy Saturday afternoon, in the sunlit warehouse where all the women had gathered. Baring all the parts my mother took such care to disguise. Holding themselves upright. Dancing without a second thought of someone else's thoughts. And then, there she was, this luminescent cherub in a flimsy caftan. The silhouette, when static, like my mother's house coat. But in the breeze? It was like she was disrobed.