Mother's Day 2007

New York


This morning I washed my face just like I do every morning.

I looked in the mirror. My washcloth was a faded salmon, monogrammed, with eyelet trim long ago greyed.

Suddenly I was back in time in the tiny pink tiled bathroom of my chidhood. When I was small, my bedroom was on the same floor as my parents. My sister and brother were upstairs with their own bedrooms--and a bathroom.

In the morning from the time I can remember, I would wake up and go into my mother's bathroom. It was always warm in the mornings, and it always smelled of Joy, mother's perfume of choice. She would be standing over the sink, washing her pale, round face, scanning it for imperfections as she moved down each cheek.

When I walked in rubbing my eyes with my fists, I would stand next to her at the small stand-alone sink, poking her hip with my elbow. "Me too, Mommy," I'd say, sliding in front of her. She would rinse out the pink washcloth with bright white eyelet trim, the monogrammed letters "MLB" swirled at the tip in white.

I would watch silently as she leaned her long arms over me from behind, testing the water temperature and wringing out the cloth. We would both watch in the mirror, looking like mismatched stairsteps, while she washed my face in long, slow strokes, my chin scraping the bowl of the sink.

This morning, I could feel her strong hands and the warmth of that pink washcloth on my cheeks, my brow, my neck.

May was my mom's birthday, anniversary, Mother's Day, and Memorial Day when every year, we would all pile in the car and drive to the cemetery in Manchester, Iowa, 60 miles away from home, to put flowers on her mother, Ada's, grave. Every single year.

Happy May, Mom. I haven't forgotten.