Parched & Faded: Lipstick Memories

Covid-Quarantine, day 114.

It’s been months since I put on lipstick, of course, because/masks. But like the riding the proverbial bike, when the time comes, I know I’ll remember how. Muscle memory/habit/learned behavior/instinct/heredity?

Watching Big Edie apply lipstick prior to a Zoom meeting with her doctor, I recognize myself. We both start at the apex of one cupid’s bow riser, one/two/three strokes down, then swoop down to the corner. Repeat at the apex of the other side: One/Two/Three & swoop. Then, the bottom lip from corner A to corner B, reverse B to A. Push lips together and run a pinky down the center of the bow.

Done.

Grown-up ladies know how to apply lipstick.
The One/Two/Three & swoop is unique to us.
Am I her mirror, or is she mine?

I’d sit, entranced, on the toilet bowl as the rituals and secrets of grown lady makeup application was passed down. I have so few intact childhood memories, but this remains, in Technicolor. The fake yellow marble wallpaper surrounding the three tub walls, red for the rest of the bathroom. I am four/five/seven sitting on the closed toilet seat while she does her One/Two/Three & swoop. I don’t remember the eye makeup, rouge or eyebrows. Just her deep orange lipstick, complementing her wild red hair. I was completely safe, a mother-daughter bond forged out of Revlon Hot Coral in a suburban bathroom, reinforced when she was an Avon lady and I practiced with the child-sized sample lipsticks she brought home. One/Two/Three & swoop.

Day 111 of the Quarantine, I cut and colored my own hair. A curly shag ala Robert Plant/Jimmy Page circa 1970-something, brightening up the day and my naturally white curls with an overlay of hot pink. This time, Ma sat on the toilet, entranced.

Another circle traveled, she watched, looking to learn something she used to know back when she was the one at the mirror “brightening up” her natural red, dulled considerably since the birth of the baby (aka, moi).

Big Edie Benjamin Buttons along, forgetting all the every-day things I’d learned from her, the things that make up a life, she  tries to re-learn living, from me. Little by little the things fade, disappearing faster than they first appeared. Reading. Cursive. Signing her name. Velcro. Buttons.  Folding a fitted sheet. Folding a pillowcase. The difference between the white cordless telephone and the black television remote. One moment she remembers, then it’s gone all that remains are the shape: rectangular; and location: somewhere on the night-table. 

You told me this before. Why can’t I remember?

What’s lost will never come back. I can’t fix it, stop it or even slow it down in any meaningful way. Instead, I honor our lessons, reminding her who taught me to read a recipe & cook (clean as you go/make extra & freeze individual portions for later); clean a house properly (start at the top and work your way down to the floors); play double solitaire, gin rummy, 500 rummy; put on lipstick (One/Two/Three & swoop); it is okay to enjoy sex; make a bed with fresh sheets without disturbing the patient; balance a checkbook, save for a rainy day, stretch a dollar; there is no shame in poverty, all work is worth respect and all sentient beings matter; and life and time are finite.  Loving someone makes them look more beautiful in your eyes, horizontal stripes make you look wider, vertical stripes, taller. Monotone slims you and capri pants make your my legs appear short and stubby.

I never want to forget the lessons, the learning, or the teacher. But, just as she forgets me on the regular now (I gave birth to you? Are you telling me a true thing?), along with my father and her first husband, I know there is a good chance I will eventually, forget all the grown lady things I learned from my seat on the toilet, at the kitchen table, in front of her bedroom closet. When she remembers her mother, their remembered relationship is more tender and intimate than it ever was IRL. Maybe I’ll have that, if more intimate is even possible without actually crawling inside each other’s skin suits.

When it is my turn at old and daft, I want the memory of her and these last months and days with the person who taught me to apply lipstick, that horizontal stripes were hers, and I should stick to vertical stripes, monochromatic outfits, and avoid “pedal pushers.” Failing that, I hope to be daft enough not to know what I’ve forgotten. Losing skills, abilities, friends, names or words, then knowing there had been a life–a good life–with good friends and bad times, and broken hearts and true loves, a life of silly and laughter and tears.  Knowing all of that existed once, but recedes when you reach for it like the waters surrounding Tantalus,  you’ll remain parched.

Her real life, she knows, is now just out of her grasp.