MY! You looked so youthful and strong yesterday at lunch. I think you ought to take a cruise per month if this is what they do to people! You were so happy, too. I don't think you've ever smiled so wide as you did when I told you about my volunteer docent fun. Seeing your siblings once a year must feed your soul like Handel feeds Christmas.
As we talked and ate our Porfolio Sams there on Fourth St., ignoring smokers and motorcycle mufflers, boom boxes and dog walkers, it occurred to me to snap a pic with my phone, but...
. . . MOM. You have a mustache.
It's always bothered me a little, b u t , -- um, Mumsie? Can we talk? It's gotten really rather... LONG, and outside in the sun, it seems ...darker. I know you've told me to put a lid on my 'God-talk' and "That's enough-- !Stop sending me God-notes in the mail..." you'd say. But what about hygiene talk?
Can I make facial hygiene an issue?
You are an amazing woman, Mamie. I love you as never before. Your being eighty-four*is a miraculous gift from a God who loves you and healed you after each stroke, after each glitch in your heart meds and each skip in Dad's heart rate before he died on your 53rd anniversary. All that triumph makes it ever more essential to exalt The Saviour in those little things in life. You love literature and knitting tiny little baby sweaters; you prize fine art, fine music and your Catholic Mass. How, then, can it be so easy to dismiss long, dark, inopportune hair on your upper lip?
So, no, I didn't really want to snap a photo. When we finally figure out how to PhotoShop those glaring disfigurements, I'll finally freely snap away.
Until then, Mom,
As we talked and ate our Porfolio Sams there on Fourth St., ignoring smokers and motorcycle mufflers, boom boxes and dog walkers, it occurred to me to snap a pic with my phone, but...
. . . MOM. You have a mustache.
It's always bothered me a little, b u t , -- um, Mumsie? Can we talk? It's gotten really rather... LONG, and outside in the sun, it seems ...darker. I know you've told me to put a lid on my 'God-talk' and "That's enough-- !Stop sending me God-notes in the mail..." you'd say. But what about hygiene talk?
Can I make facial hygiene an issue?
You are an amazing woman, Mamie. I love you as never before. Your being eighty-four*is a miraculous gift from a God who loves you and healed you after each stroke, after each glitch in your heart meds and each skip in Dad's heart rate before he died on your 53rd anniversary. All that triumph makes it ever more essential to exalt The Saviour in those little things in life. You love literature and knitting tiny little baby sweaters; you prize fine art, fine music and your Catholic Mass. How, then, can it be so easy to dismiss long, dark, inopportune hair on your upper lip?
So, no, I didn't really want to snap a photo. When we finally figure out how to PhotoShop those glaring disfigurements, I'll finally freely snap away.
Until then, Mom,
. . . can we talk?
[Saved in drafts until Mom had been gone a year. Before she died, the greatest victory to date occurred the day we were getting ready to go somewhere. She consented to an upper lip hair removal using NADS, a nearly painless wax strip found in any RiteAid or CVS. I was ecstatic. She looked GOOD. Again.]
[Saved in drafts until Mom had been gone a year. Before she died, the greatest victory to date occurred the day we were getting ready to go somewhere. She consented to an upper lip hair removal using NADS, a nearly painless wax strip found in any RiteAid or CVS. I was ecstatic. She looked GOOD. Again.]
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