“Good morning Diane, darling, ” Demeter, Diane’s mother greeted her cheerily with a warm smile, looking up from the newspaper.  “How did you sleep last night?”

She snapped the paper, and folded it in half, and then set it aside in order to pour coffee for her daughter.  Diane sleepily walked over to the breakfast table, and bent to give her mother a kiss on the proferred cheek, then sat on the chair next to her, pulling up one leg to prop her arm on it, and then rested her cheek on the arm, looking sideways at Demeter.

“I was a little restless, found it hard to sleep … Um, why are you all dressed up, mom?” Diane asked curiously. Demeter looked at her raised knee pointedly, and remained silent.  She reached for the paper she had set aside, as she took another sip of coffee.

Diane smiled inwardly – she knew she wasn’t going to get further conversation from Demeter until she lowered her knee and sat up, at least semi-properly.

She wrinkled her nose playfully at her mom, and then slid her foot down until it rested on the floor.

With a small smile, Demeter responded, “I’m dropping by the Phillips Museum to meet with Carter there about an exhibit they’re planning for next summer.  He wanted my advice about how the exhibit was shaping up, and what he ought to bone up on before approaching the De Mille Collection about a few pieces he may need for the exhibit.”

She paused, then asked with as much enthusiasm as she could summon, “If you’re not doing anything, why don’t you join me?”

Diane shook her head with a smile. She took a sip of the coffee, and then answered, with a groan, “Mom… you’ve been trying to get me to go with you to museums as long as I can remember, and even when you were a museum director, you must remember that I never went willingly with you, right?”

She rubbed her mother’s arm affectionately, “What makes you think that I’d go with you now that I’m in my late twenties, if I didn’t go with you as a gullible child?”

Her mother laughed lightly, “Hope springs eternal, darling.”

Diane continued to rub her mother’s arm, sipping her coffee as she did so.  “Anyway, you are, as always, well-coiffed and impeccably dressed, mother.”