08-017
It had been years since I’d
seen him and I could tell he noticed a few changes in me. In fact, he appeared to be backing
away. I hadn’t thought, frankly, that
time had been totally unkind to me but with each step he took backward, I took
one forward until, finally, he said, “What’s wrong with your face?”
The vanity gods struck as I
put my hand up to my face and it slid across my cheek. I had left the house with my white
anti-wrinkle cream still applied. He
was looking at a dollop of thick cream the size of a small casserole with a
nose sticking out.
He nodded as I sputtered and
promptly waved as he sped out of the post office. He appeared to think it was a skin condition that was contagious
or that being seen talking to a lemon meringue pie might reflect badly upon
him. Perhaps, a policeman on the corner thought him suspicious as he jumped
three steps to get out of Dodge.
I tried to remember all the
other places I had visited before the
post office as I ran back to my car.
My head sagged into the well of the guillotine steering wheel. I had also been to the grocery store and
seen one former student and another parent.
Is death by a large axe blade painful or sweet? I remembered the face of a psychiatrist I
knew who was leaving the Zoots Dry Cleaners as I was going in, just after I’d gone to the grocery
store. I had smiled at him and he had
returned that pinched passive look that comes with years of watching natural
disasters unfold on his couch.
If my mother were alive on
this day, she would have dropped the blade of the guillotine onto my reddening
neck herself. Is it possible to drive
home safely following decapitation? I’m
about to find out. She died of natural
causes at the age of 96 with her Max Factor compact open on her bedside table.
I contemplate at a stoplight
the contrast to my death from embarrassment at 63. Love for her make-up pot had been strong enough to defy
dementia. Vanity was her weapon not humiliation. She could spend whole afternoons staring
deeply into a mirror the same way Stephen Hawking looks into black holes.
What love objects shall I
throw at dementia if it comes my way—my favorite egg salad sandwich with green
onions? My Bose Wave radio with Ipod dock?
When I open my garage door,
I have a solution. I’ll move the
mirrored chest from the bedroom to the hallway and place it in front of the
door as a barricade—my vanity, literally and figuratively, my “catcher in the
rye”.
It shall prevent aging
children from falling off the cliff, or at the very least, from ever leaving
the house again without first looking in the mirror.