I have a 12-year-old son. He is beyond St. Nick, fairies, bunnies and monsters. And, now it would seem, the angelic patina surrounding his mother.
He hops in LaFonda the Honda Odyssey of ours and I ask about his day. As he turns my direction and opens his mouth to speak, he recoils. With eyes squinted in veritable disdain, he stares at me and judgmentally says, “Mom…you’ve got some….thing. Just, aughhhh, just look in the mirror!” And with that, he averts his eyes in disgust.
Now feeling like something featured on whatever special The Discovery Channel puts up against The Superbowl, I look in the mirror. Granted my cave wasn’t completely bat-free but it wasn’t as if I had an Egg Mc Muffin tucked in my nostril. “What’s the BIG deal?” I wonder.
“Just use a napkin! Get a Kleenex! SOMETHING! Aw, sick!” he exclaims as if he were Louis Pasteur instead of the middle school boy who could easily recycle his lunch napkin a good 9 weeks if so inclined. I think they call that irony.
Then, it hit me. I remembered the time I remarked about my mother’s brown age spots on her hand and wondered why she got upset. Or the time, bothered by her moustache, I waxed her upper lip and accidentally scalded her, leaving a Hitler-esque scab the day before an important dinner. Or the Lee press-on debacle of ’93 where a reaction to the nail glue had her convinced that she had carpal-tunnel syndrome.
Maybe Karma is real. Too soon we forget that our mothers whose noses at times have a little something extra in them wiped ours, and other things as well.
So, I won’t take it too personally. It is always disorienting to find flaws in the women who gave us life. I just hope when all is said and done that the goodness will outshine the goatee in my son’s memories of me.
jinnyhenson.net 
Jinny,
This is great! Thanks for making me smile today.
Ooooo…I can’t wait for those moments. My favorite is drop me off around the block. Who were we punishing with that…?
Jinny,
You brought me to a memory I can relate too. I can now laugh out loud about shaving my Mom’s legs. She had just come home from a hospital stay and very weak. I was in the 8th grade. I told her that her leg hair was way too long and because she felt too bad, I would take care of it. I started the process with lots of shaving cream and quickly took care of the problem, because I could tell she didn’t feel too good. That was evident,for when she talked she didn’t open her eyes. Which was a good thing, because when I cleaned the enormous mound of shaving cream from her legs I could see that I had nicked the skin till she was bleeding from many places. I quickly attached toliet paper to clot each spot and was so glad she didn’t open her eyes to see the mess I had made of her legs. She never mention what I had done, but my Dad did say she wouldn’t need shaving again for a long time……So today when I go to the nursing home to feed my mother, who has Alz, I will share and laugh this memory with her.
Thank you