By request . ..
Trying to add stuff about my mom to a script I'm working on:
My mom was patient and kind and polite. She loved breezes in the summer and painting snow with bits of sponge in the winter. The kitchen was warm and AM radio was jolly. She had the ugliest feet I’ve ever seen. Clearly, they’d never, EVER seen a pedicure. Yet she regularly colored her hair with Loving Care and constantly plucked her eyebrows. Once she accidentally dyed her hair pink. She had the same haircut for at least 40 years, maybe longer. She sent me care packages when I went to camp for two weeks every summer. She sewed costumes for every dance recital I performed in and played Chopin for me when I was a little girl. Pieces I would later play at her funeral. She drank ice water incessantly, took mile long walks and longer bikerides. She grew a beautiful garden. When she wrapped gifts, she included miniature roses she’d grown tied into the ribbons.
She was horrified by older men in speedos:
“Those old men with their . . . dried up . . .genitalia!”
Who says that? Who says genitalia?
When my sister was 16, my mom put on her bright red bathing suit to prove that she hadn’t gained weight since marriage and three kids and wore it to the beach.
When I was 13, my mom wordlessly left a giant box of maxi pads in my bedroom, behind my bed.
When I missed her cheek once when I kissed her goodnight, she said
“Girls never kiss each other on the lips. Never.”
And thus was my inroad to my own sexuality. My mom was in Yugoslavia when I got my first period. Was God suggesting that maybe Mom wouldn’t be around for the big events in my life?
I miss her. I don’t remember what her laugh sounded like but I remember how rosy her olive skin turned when she drank wine. She talked to my dad every day at lunch time and talked to her mother for at least an hour at least once a week.
When she died, I rushed to her bureau and looked at her clothes, her jewelry, her stylish clutch purses that had long since been replaced by handbags more practical. I stole my favorite pair of earrings, a pair of beautiful opals encircled in gold, remembered the way they’d dangled from her ears.
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