my mother never wore makeup.

My mother never wore makeup. No eye shadow or mascara, no foundation
or blush. A tube of pink coral lipstick could last a whole year in the bottom of
her pocketbook, only rolled up out of its gold tube on special occasions, like
weddings and PTA meetings.

In her wedding picture, my mother looks like Elinor Donahue, the daughter
in Father Knows Best. Her short black hair has a slight wave below the ears,
framing her twenty nine year old face.

My mother never rode a bike, could barely swim. She said she didn’t know
how to breathe like a swimmer so, for her swimming test in high school, she
held her breath for the entire lap across and back.

My mother didn’t like octopus or squid or any fish in a shell. She did not like
to sit in the sun. She was good at crossword puzzles and Scrabble and those
logic games where you have to figure out, if Jane likes cats and Matthew is
allergic to dogs, who sits next to Bob in the office.

We’d watch Jeopardy together way back when Art Fleming was the host, and
my mom got so many answers right I thought she should be on the show.

She didn’t drink except maybe a single whiskey sour at someone’s bar
mitzvah. She didn’t smoke, either, but she sometimes held a friend’s
cigarette between her fingers because she liked the way it felt.

My mother had scars from a hysterectomy, a lumpectomy and the death of
her seven year old son from neuroblastoma.

Her favorite ice cream was Baskin Robbins Rocky Road and Burgundy
Cherry. She liked the eggrolls with the bumpy wonton wrappers. When she
was on the original Weight Watchers with Jean Neidich, she ordered beef
with bean sprouts with no cornstarch at the Chinese restaurant.

My mother could recite entire poems, like Trees and The Wasteland and
Casey at the Bat. She played the piano by ear and sang the harmony on
Happy Birthday.

She swore by Ivory soap, Prell shampoo, Scott toilet paper and Kleenex
tissues. She preferred S&W over Libby’s, Macy’s over Penney’s. She always
drove an American car.

My mother didn’t garden or sew or read Ladies Home Journal. She drank
Chock Full of Nuts coffee and SweeTouchNee tea. Her standard home cooked
meals were hamburgers, salmon latkes and spaghetti and meatballs served
with canned LeSeur peas.

She had small hands and AAA narrow feet and her pinky toes curled behind
the others, just like mine. She could add three digit numbers in her head
and type fifty five words per minute.

My mother looked pretty in pink and gray and black. She preferred elastic
waisted pants and skirts and didn’t wear a bra around the house. She
usually wore a turtleneck under her blouse – not because she was cold – but
to hide the layers of her neck.

We buried her in the navy velour pants and matching jacket, hood up, with
a pink turtleneck underneath. No bra, no makeup, just a hint of lipstick, just
like she asked.

-Ruth Davis

[photo of young Ruth]