Postcards from the Fast Lane

To this day, if I close my eyes, I can see (and hear) (and smell) my mother clearly as she methodically dressed in the mornings…all the while clarifying for her inquisitive daughter, the reasoning behind each undergarment.

“A proper lady always wears a girdle, garter belt, and stockings,” she would say.

Next, she would reach for the delicate white lace “full slip”…never a half slip…heavens to Betsy no. Then, this is where it gets good…she would choose a spotless linen handkerchief from the top drawer of her Birdseye maple dresser, put an undisclosed sum of folded green paper money in the middle and tie the handkerchief tightly around it. The next step was to pin it securely inside her brassiere…never a “bra.”

“This is a Southern lady’s best kept secret,” she whispered.

After slipping into a sheer flowered summer dress and smoothing her hair one last time, she would carefully reach for her transparent glass perfume bottle adorned with a crystal jeweled dabber cap. Ever so gently, she would dab the sweet-smelling perfume behind each ear and on the inside of each wrist. Always in exactly the same spots. Then she would turn to me and smile.

“You’ll be a grown-up lady soon so I think you should start smelling like one.” And she would dab the perfume in exactly the same spots on me.

Sadly, my mother’s dressing routine was quelled by Alzheimer’s, but we still continued the perfume ritual. And for a brief moment, her eyes reflected that same familiar tenderness as we dabbed the sweet-smelling perfume in all the right places.

My sister, Margaret and our cousin, Sissy ate watermelon all day long. Not because they loved watermelon that much but because they made it a contest…seeing who could spit the seeds the farthest. Oh, I ate my share of cold watermelon too. Only thing, I swallowed more of the seeds than I spit. Margaret and Sissy would have giggling fits watching me. After awhile, it began to get on my nerves. But with me being only four years old, if I wasn’t “winning,” nothing was much fun.

The screech of a large bird of an unknown species temporarily caught my attention. As I watched him circling the sky above me, I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and wished, “Swoop down and grab Margaret and Sissy and leave them on top of a mountain somewhere…please.”

But of course, that didn’t happen. Frowning, I muttered, “Who ever heard of a family picnic reunion? And on the hottest day of the year…ole’ hot steamy July 4th. …and in Texas!”

Suddenly I smelled vanilla…the kind of vanilla that goes into homemade vanilla ice cream. Thoughts of watermelon seeds, uncooperative birds, strange people, and the scorching heat disappeared when I spotted my Aunt Leora heading toward me with a bowl of ice cream.

“Thought you might like this.”

I could only smile and nod my head.

Just when I thought this reunion thing wasn’t really so bad, up walk Margaret and Sissy. “Hey squirt, did you know that if you swallow watermelon seeds, they’ll grow out your ears.”

I fell for it hook, line, and sinker! Suddenly I understood why my mother always warned me, “Don’t swallow the seeds.”

After returning home, I spent a great deal of time in front of the mirror checking out my ears for any signs that watermelon harvest was near. Hey! I was four years old…

Lesson learned?  To this day, I would rather face a firing squad than swallow a watermelon seed.