She blind-sided me while I was still in sleepy disarray. She, a mirror morning reflection wearing mismatched pajamas (if an old high school track t-shirt, last year's maternity pants and black socks even qualify as that. "Pajamas" are quite the broad species - Victoria's Secret silky numbers despise their taxonomical cross-contamination with this sort of sad get-up). On her head, a mop of bad highlights that looked something between a half side-ponytail and half ear toupee. Her rough hair hadn't felt a smooth bristle since Sunday. It doesn't help that somehow every hair brush in the house somehow frolics away to that same vanishing world where left socks, barrettes, and scotch tape conspire their pranks (scotch tape to missing item friends: "Did you see that look on her face while she was tearing the whole house apart?! Classic. Oh my god (elbowing left sock) - Look now! She's trying to use blue tack on that present! She's running late! She's sweating a lot! What a trainwreck!") That was yesterday.
At 7:19 this morning, Tuesday wasn't looking any better. Like the camera adds 10 pounds, maybe the mirror adds 10 - I don't know - weird things. Like a big ole age spot. Eyebrow wrinkles. Toothpaste on her shirt collar from the night before. So I stopped for a moment, catching a flicker of something familiar in the mirror. A strange wave came over me, as if I had seen this funny 30s woman, somewhere, once before.
I remember my mom when I was little girl, 7 or 8 maybe, scuffling down the stairs in the cold bone-break of morning - grey crew socks, furry shoe slippers - the ugliest kind, her pastel floral robe hanging about her, a giant drape straight from the curtain rod, tied around her waist like a too big kimono gone wrong. Her hair was boy-cut short, but it still found a wiry way to look like it needed help, and bad. She'd wake my brother and I up: "time to get up, time to get ready for school." And I'd follow her down, Brian behind me, and the three of us would cycle through our morning routine to prepare for another big day of school. After she'd scavenge the cupboards, rearranging everything, she'd find the box, and as soon as she had served my brother and I our delicious bowls of instant oatmeal, she'd scuffle back upstairs to get dressed. As soon as she'd hit stair 3, I'd stand up - bowl and spoon ready - and scurry over to the sink like a quick little mouse to scrape the thick stuff down the garbage disposal. To my credit, I did try it once. I immediately felt like I was choking on a hunk of barbed wire covered in, I guess, oatmeal. So I promised my throat and watery eyeballs: "Never again."
Once the goop was safely deposited in its proper place, I'd scamper back across the kitchen floor to my seat with the empty bowl and spoon (alibi: "mmm, I just gobbled it up it was so good mom!"), arms folded in front of me, a sure smirk on my face. ("Cha-ching! I did it again! Life's a thrill! I just threw perfectly good food down the sink and didn't get caught!") After a while, I was like a strolling bank robber on my tenth heist - over-confident, sloppy. I'd start to get up as soon as she turned her back, oatmeal down the drain before she hit stair 2. And always, I sat across from my big brother, a pleasant look of satisfaction on my face and without a bite of breakfast in front of me (I've always destested breakfast foods, for the most part. Belgium waffles and bacon are my exceptions - though, not together) while he, oh Brian - well he'd shake his obedient head in disagreement, eyes glued to his oatmeal in firm refusal to corroborate. Oh Brian. A loyal dog always accepting what was given to him. To this day, I still love this gracious quality about my brother.
After my breakfast crime, I'd run upstairs and quickly get dressed so I could head towards the bathroom to brush my teeth and then stand in the doorway to watch my mom finish getting ready. I'd ask her a question that was eerily similar to the one I had asked her the day before, and the day before that, and -- "What are you doing, Mom?" She would be slapping on blush in a frenzy before we headed out the door. "Putting on my makeup" she'd answer quickly (almost like she was expecting the question. Go figure). Then came my existentialism. "Why?" "To give my cheeks some color" she'd say, sucking in like a fish, rolling the big fluffy brush along her cheekbones, once, twice, three times each. Then on her forehead. Then her eyelids. A few strokes on her neck. And last, along her thin chin line, like a V.
I was adopted when I was two. Me - Korean, heart-shaped face, long thick black hair, thin eyes, big cheeks. My mom - white, a long-face, thin everywhere, short fine brown hair (sometimes it was reddish, other times frosted), pale blue eyes, skinny cheeks. You can assume with confidence that I've never looked anything like my mom. Ever. That includes our chins. I was always jealous of my mom's thin chin. And her scrawny arms. I would pass on her long fingers and flat butt, but her arms and her chin I'd take happily.
When she was finished rubbing blush on everything except her ears, she'd throw the brush into the drawer, whack it closed with her hip like she suddenly remembered we needed to be somewhere, and she'd hurry us along, her hands on my shoulders, steering me like a car - out of the bathroom doorway, down the stairs, out the door, back through the door, "get your lunch Stacey!", out the door again, to the bus stop. On our walk down the block in the brisk fall air, I'd inspect her, curious, like a science project. I'd think to myself: "Wow, she looks pretty...pink. Pretty too. But pink."
Like a distant memory - the foggy kind - I recall that I once made a silent self-declaration - "When I get big, and old, like a mom, I am not going to wear grey socks, or terrible slippers (my mom to me: "so what! they're comfortable and when you get to be my age you don't care what they look like") and I will wake up early enough to apply my makeup carefully, with a little more grace, a little more va-voom!" In a similar proclamation, I went through a phase during middle school when I felt absolutely certain that as soon as I tasted the sweet freedom of adulthood, I would rotate between McDonalds and Taco Bell for every meal, including breakfast (Taco Bell for breakfast, of course, since I don't like breakfast food). Why not, I figured. My mom won't be around to veto. She'd say assuredly as she chopped a big floral arrangement of vegetables at the kitchen sink: "Nope, honey, not tonight. Fast food's okay once in a while, but there's nothing like a home-cooked meal." Well, what did she know anyway, right? She was just my mom. She didn't know me! She didn't own me! Or my thoughts! Or my dreams. I knew what I wanted, who I wanted to be! What I wanted to do! These days, I look in my empty fridge and wonder how my mom got all those delicious dinners to magically appear. One day I'll have to ask her.
So, at 7:19 this morning, she looked at me, reflected back towards me, standing in my sad excuse for pajamas, from somewhere like a distant morning past. And in that blind-sided mirror moment, disheveled, running late, makeup-less, one unpacked lunch waiting for me in the kitchen, one kid shouting for oatmeal (my mini-me daughter, well - all except for that) and the other smaller kid - for a sucker, I stood, staring at her from head to toe. And I just laughed. Loudly. Because it hit me - I looked about as old as I remembered my mother looked young, back in those bathroom doorway days when motherhood was synonymous with dry hands and unfashionable clothes. And wouldn't you know that in that moment, for the first time in my life, and hers as well, I was beginning to look just like my mother.
Heart Smile :)
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