Perfect Toenails

You have perfect toenails.  Toes that are shaped like a tiny girl’s hands, perfectly sized, perfect shaped nail beds with just the right amount of white distal edge.  Not too short, not too long.  Too perfect actually.  It makes me want to bite them off.  Like my own fingernails, bitten off, married to chewed and chomped cuticles.

It didn’t matter what Ma threatened - matches, nail oil, the taste of sour metal.  What do they put in that stuff anyway?

My fingernails are not allowed to progress to the length they have strived for over the past 54 years.  Oh, now and then, the rare manicure protects them from my jaws for a short time but not from the opposite hand which picks away, like chisel to marble, leaving cracks in the paint, then no more paint, then teeth return to their exposed prey.  It’s a nervous tick, anxiety honed from years of her pre-emptive strikes, stealth like assaults, catching me off guard.  Not this time, I would say as I crouched in my corner, eyes darting back and forth, scanning the room for a sign of her approach, subsisting on my own cannibalistic meals of keratin and protein.

You have perfect toenails.  How is that possible?  To not have dried up skin hanging off the lateral nail field, coupled with scraggly nail edges? This pisses me off.  You don’t look like you have nail-coifing tendencies.  I have no mouth access to my own toes.  If I could get my teeth down there, they would be as perfect as yours, albeit quite a bit shorter.  I looked up at your face and you do not have the face of a nail biter.  Come to think of it, you don’t have the face of someone with perfect toenails.

Does your mother know my mother?  I will ask you tomorrow.

Alone and Awake

Sleepless, so get stoned, fall in love with your children all over again, panic, gasp for a breath and wonder if anxiety is becoming the norm. Look where you've gone, been to, going to, long for, escape from, retreat to the imaginings of an ever youthful heart that thinks life began an hour ago. Long for dirt trails and hoofed animals, barns and pooches, a walk in your beloved birches, the only tree you know, but why not, you only need one kind to love...me, sons, a life better than on the planet of loons where you find yourself working today and wondering how you got there in the first place. Lessons waiting for mastering if you could only figure out whom the teacher is and what the fuck she is mumbling under her breath. A course you completed years ago.

And I miss you.  Alone, awake, stoned.

Fur Coats and Shiny Black Pumps

Ma had one fur coat, but it wasn’t quite right.  Either it was too short or it wasn’t the right kind of fur or not enough fur or maybe it just didn’t make a big enough statement about her for the entire world to see. Whatever the reason, she needed a new fur.  The question that dilemma posed, however, was, how to buy a new fur coat without spending any additional money.

Where can I cut back for my must have??  Hmmm, we can cut out….ah…mmm…some food!  Yeah! If I cut back for, let’s see, six or nine months, I’ll have it!  Perfect.

So all six of us were put on a weight loss plan and Ma got her full-length Pavlis and Brother’s mink.  As I recall, it took about nine months.

There are a lot of attributes that I’ve inherited from my mother. I am not proud of many of them, but the least dangerous is her Imelda Marcos OCD shoe obsession.  I love shoes.  And Ma loved shoes.  To Ma it was all about what people (primarily the women in our Greek Orthodox congregation) really noticed, those careful finishing touches like icing flowers on a cake or the well-manicured lawn and fresh coat of paint on the siding of the house.

Her closet was filled, not with glamorous designer dresses, but with coats and shoes.  Pumps.  In every color.  All with a heel high enough to accentuate the line of her shapely legs.  Anyone looking at her would have to get a picture perfect view whether starting at the top or bottom.  Ah, great hat!  And that coat!  But wait, look at those shoes!  Or, great shoes, wow, those are some nice gams, but holy cow, look at that coat and hat!

Now she had her new black mink fur from Pavlis and Sons in Chicago and a new pair of black patent pumps, all a perfect match to her gold Cadillac with champagne leather interior.  And we were off to church to show it all off.   The mink and shoes that is.  She snapped when I asked if I could help her off with the fur once we got into the pew.

            “I’m fine,” she sharply but quietly snipped through her tell-tale Joker grin that would affix itself to her face as soon as we stepped through the church doors.

“But Ma, it’s hot in here,” I responded, confused.

“I’M FINE!” she hissed through her teeth, still smiling.

This is when I realized looking over her shoulder and down the front of the coat she wrapped so elegantly around herself that it was all she wore.  Fur coat, ratty underwear, greyed once-white slip, pantyhose with holes in the crotch and shiny black pumps.  I didn’t need her to open the coat to know what I’d find underneath.  This is what she had on as I saw her finishing her, as always, perfect make-up that morning.

Did she forget to dress?  How does one walk out of the house without clothes on?

With shiny black pumps of course!  And a fur coat. What else could possibly be required?