My mother has an interesting relationship with beauty. She has this amazing olive mexican skin so she doesn’t have a wrinkle at 70 years old.
She glows!
Even after spending her youth in the sun getting tan. It’s not fair to those of us who inherited my father’s fair freckled English skin. Although he looks gorgeous at 70 too, that fair skin takes on the wrinkles and folds of a Sharpei. And his eyes–my Dad has piercing crystal blue eyes that gaze out at the world with a brilliance that finds humor in everything he sees. How I wish my mind worked like that. I need his humor and her skin.
My mother never even wore makeup until I was twelve years old, when she decided to become a Mary Kay consultant. Twenty five years later she’s STILL using Mary Kay and refuses to see any of us in the morning until she “puts her face on.” She’s gotten crazier and crazier with the makeup.
“Marci,” she’ll say to me. “Put on some blush! You’re so pale! You look sick!”
Thanks Mom.
Even worse, she said to me once, “Marci, why don’t you put a little bit of blush on Annabelle’s cheeks. She’s so pale!” Annabelle was 10-months-old. The mere fact that someone would think it acceptable to put makeup on a baby is terrifying to me. Even worse, to suggest it to me, someone who only wears makeup on date night or to perform. Sometimes the things she says are so far out there, they don’t even merit a reply. I’m too stunned to even answer. This was one such occasion.
And the hair! Don’t even start on the hair! This is a woman who has wrapped her hair in toilet paper every night since 1954, ever since someone told her that’s the best way to maintain your hairdo. My Mom has basically had a beehive, or some variation of a beehive hairdo since 1954.I remember her beehive and gogo boots as she climbed into our orange VW bus every Sunday to drive her 6 kids to church. In those days she kept several styrofoam heads in her closet with different wigs done up in beehives–red, different variations of browns, even frosted.
There is NOTHING and I mean NOTHING that can make my Mom change her standing weekly hair appointment. At 18 I moved from Utah to California, and everyone came out to say goodbye to me, except my Mom, who was getting her hair done. It made me feel sad at the time, very sad. But I’ve since come to realize this is how she combats her own sadness. If she’s sad, or scared, or feels lost or out-of-control, she can handle it better if her hair looks good.
Makes perfect sense to me now.
Last time I visited her, she had gotten permanant eyebrows tattooed in place of her real ones which had mostly fallen out due to years of over-plucking. Brave soul–I don’t know if I would dare tattoo my face in any way. Then she called today and said she was putting ice on her eyes every half hour as she had permanent eyeliner put on her eyes. She spent a half hour explaining the whole thing to me, and then said loudly, “I have to look good in my coffin you know!”
Mom, you’re so much more beautiful than you could ever know. A little crazy in the beauty department maybe, but always beautiful.
Holding Me in 1969 in Arizona.
Wearing the boots! Heading to church in San Ramon with 4 of us in 1971.
Her greatest beauty has always been her joie de vivre!
