Raspberry Glade. Bamboo Pink. A Different Grape. These were shades my mother pulled from her purse when I asked her what lipstick she wore. Mom never left the house without hued lips. Every trip in sweatpants from our trailer to the corner store warranted application of a shade of red. The lipstick itself had armor—a hard case with a narrow mirror affixed to the inner lid. Mom always checked proper lipstick placement before entering my grandmother’s home. Nan preferred things just so. Later, when Nan, whose memories were escaping her with greater frequency, moved in, to go out, she insisted on her wool coat, pillbox hat and a bold lip.
I resisted wearing makeup, thinking it a diversion I couldn’t afford, separating myself from the lipstick-clad women who had made me.
When my brother suddenly fell ill, I flew home from Boston, where he had led the family caravan to take me to school a few years prior. The day of his funeral, I drove with Mom and Nan, both of their lips vivid when everything on my body was dark. We stepped out of the car in front of the funeral home, and as we trudged up the walk, Nan stopped, lines of worry deepening across her face. “Who died?”
My bare lips could find no words. My mother’s garnet mouth summoned the strength to tell Nan that her grandson had died. Nan’s lips twisted with the realization, again, but for the first time, that we were burying my brother. Mom held out her arm. Nan straightened, pressed her lips together in an impenetrable line and hooked her arm in Mom’s. I followed as they pushed the door open. We laid flowers in my brother’s casket, his lips rosier than I could accept for the coldness of his skin to my touch. Next to his grave among those gathered, the boldness of Mom’s words hovered, a beacon sheathed in red against the dense fog of my grief.
Avoiding colorless days that snowballed into a haze, nights became a haven, the flatness of the dark obscuring at least pieces of what was missing. Pawing through boxes of memories, I found a lipstick someone had given me that I’d tossed aside. I covered my lips in a vermilion glaze, preferring a small mirror to evade my own eyes. Then again and again, hoping the color might bleed into the day. To brave the convenience store, burgundy-stained lips complemented my sweats. I dared to venture on longer walks, the daylight buffered by my reflection in storefront windows, lips intense, leading. I poured myself into work, lips increasingly coated, wielding a deep brick to defend the thesis I dedicated to my brother.
My shade now is raisin. Another different kind of grape: one exposed to the elements, toughened, composition concentrated after what it has lost. Applied to my lips in layers and for every occasion. Pairs well with sweatpants and grit.
Situated in the quiet countryside in Korea, my family would travel at least twice a year to visit my mom’s childhood home. We reminisce over the persimmons dangling from the trees and playing hide and seek between the clay pots—whose interiors housed preciously fermented cabbages and homemade pepper paste—but nothing beats our memories of the yellow floor.
My grandmother was always preparing food. There were fish hanging in the kitchen, peppers drying out in baskets, and blocks of bean curds solidifying in the main room. When it was time to cook the side dishes for our ancestral veneration ceremony, the women would lay out newspapers underneath a small, portable griddle on the floor and beginning frying all types of jeon—a Korean savory pancake. The kids would sneak bites while the men grilled the meat outside. Our gluttony had to be kept in check to leave some for when we bowed in front of our ancestors’ portraits.
When the smell of oil filled up the main room, my grandmother would bring a metal bowl full of pure joy: rice cakes covered in soybean powder. She would adamantly stuff us with her treats while we sat around her on the floor. This was her way of showering us with love, and we gladly accepted her sweet, irresistible offers.
My grandfather would sit in his one-seater sofa, rarely leaving it empty. He was stuck to his chair like rice paste, his eyes fixed on the television. Even though he was often rough with his words, he cared for us in his own way. With the sofas occupied by adults, the kids were content on the floor.
After our daytime activities, we would gather and sit to play word games. The loser would get bopped on the back by the winners which signified the start of the next game. After a few more rounds, the kids would end up giving their parents massages, and laughter would fill the house.
When it was finally time to sleep, the rooms were divvied between the different siblings, but the kids always got the floor. With the underfloor heating to keep us toasty and warm throughout the night, we kept in our tiny grievances. We picked our favorite pillows and blankets from the mother-of-pearl cabinets that smelled of mothballs. My uncle would light a few mosquito repellent coils to keep our skin safe. The botanical smell meant it was time to close our eyes.
Life on the floor was happy. Even after my grandfather left his favorite chair and became a frame we bowed in front of, we continued to sit there and chat. Now, I greet my grandmother through a phone on the holidays, hoping she remembers she is not alone. As her memories get fuzzier and our distance apart seems too wide, I will remember for the both of us how her hard and bare floor filled us with an unforgettable warmth.
The only thing I hate worse than having whiskers on my face is the act of shaving them off. This is, as you might imagine, a duality I had to come to grips with years ago, and the compromise my twin loathings produced is that I only shave about once a week.
Subsequently, I don’t buy a ton of shaving cream. But I was at Costco a while back, and you know how one gets at Costco, so when I saw six-packs of cartoonishly tall cans of Gillette Edge sensitive skin (my brand!) I chucked one into my cartoonishly large shopping cart and went on my Costco-y way. I’d use it all up eventually, and this way I could cross shaving cream off my shopping list for the foreseeable future. But later, while unloading, I had an unnerving thought: What if I don’t outlive it?
I did some quick Googling followed by some even quicker multiplication, none of which eased my mind in the slightest. Gillette says you should get 50 shaves from a 7-ounce can, but mine were 14-ouncers, so at one shave a week it’d take me two years to get through one can and a full dozen to polish off the six-pack. I just turned 66, and while my plan is to still be here at 78, I’m not sure what the Vegas line would be on my prospects, and I don’t love the idea of having to itemize health and beauty products in my last will and testament.
Now I’m no happier than you are about the logical extension of this line of thinking, but it’s inescapable; there must be an actuary at every Costco checkout stand to flag potential purchases that have, let’s say, a 50% or better chance of outliving their purchasers. Kind of like the “you must be this tall to ride this ride” prohibition, just at the opposite end of the life cycle, as in “you must be this young to buy this 128-ounce can of shaved white truffles.”
I’m getting to an age where one starts looking at things with an increased focus on finality, resolution, and other gut-wobbling perspectives. We do a much better job of helping people lead healthy enough lives to reach old age than helping them figure out what to do once they get there. And so, like much of life, elder learning is a lot of trial and error, though the error stakes get exponentially higher with each passing year. I used to yell at my kids when they came down stairs while looking at their phones; now that I’ve entered the demographic for which falling is a leading cause of not being able to get up ever again, I pause before each stair descent, making sure to have whatever faculties already haven’t fled the scene locked and loaded for the increasingly perilous journey. In fact, at this point, the only thing I fear more than a trip downstairs…is shaving.
I was 19 when I held an urn for the first time.
Two months prior, I had graduated from Army basic training and got assigned to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), the unit based in Washington, D.C., that carries out the military funerals in Arlington National Cemetery.
You ever see soldiers carry a flag-draped casket in Arlington? That was my unit.
But I was the new soldier, which meant I’d have to earn my way on to a casket team, which meant, in the meantime, I was put on detail at The Columbarium, tasked with handling the cremated remains of service members and their loved ones.
The Columbarium detail is simple compared to casket funerals. As the lone private on these details, I was tasked with ceremoniously transporting the urn with all respect and military bearing.
I was not supposed to stand out. If the family never remembered me after the ceremony, I had completed the mission to perfection. Be forgettable, and don’t drop the urn.
The supervising sergeant said that to me on the first day. He was on this detail because he got bumped off a casket team. He got bumped off a casket team because he wasn’t very good at it. He wasn’t very good at it because he would constantly forget things.
For example, he forgot to tell me to wet my gloves. We wore cotton white gloves, which need to be held under a faucet prior to a funeral, so that they have a better grip. Somehow, no one had told me this, and the sergeant didn’t bother to check.
The first two funerals at The Columbarium were completed to perfection. Both times, I carried small wooden boxes and marched crisply (but forgettable) to the inurnment location. My role was no more than 60 seconds.
My confidence was beginning to replace my anxiety. I had been way too nervous, I realized. I began to let my nerves settle a bit.
The third funeral came in the late afternoon. I got the requisite head nod from the sergeant and ceremoniously walked up to the car that was transporting the urn. I stopped at the open door of the passenger seat and bent down.
But I didn’t see a wooden box.
It was a marble egg. There’s no other way to describe it. A beautiful marble egg. It was certainly fitting and appropriate to transport remains, but still: a smooth and heavy marble egg.
My gloves were not wet. Cotton slides easily on marble. This was, I would guess, a 30-pound marble egg. No edges. No real grip. So heavy. So slippery.
That was the longest walk I’ll ever take. I was gripping this egg for dear life, certain it was going to slip out of my cotton gloves at any second.
But I eventually made it. I handed off the urn. I walked away. I sat in a car, a bundle of nerves.
I was completely forgettable.
We’re moving to Gainesville, and I’m finally getting out of this podunk, nowhere town, where everyone thinks I’m a slut. I walk down our street for the last time. I’m leaving this place: I’m leaving Highway 90 and the one square block they call downtown, I’m leaving all the skater boys, and our ranch-style house squatting under the oak tree that drips palmetto bugs into its walls.
Palmetto bugs are all I know cockroaches to be: black and shiny, as big as my father’s big toe, with wings that carry them to the tallest thing in the room, which is usually someone’s head. I felt the silkiness of their wings when I pulled one out of my combat boot. I felt the tickle of their feet as one crawled onto my hand while I sat on the living room loveseat, waiting for Robbie in the dark. I felt the crunch of their exoskeletons when I accidentally stepped on one, sneaking barefoot onto the back carport. That didn’t kill it though. Killing them requires multiple direct hits with the hardest weapon in the house—a hard back book or a hard-soled shoe. They can be sucked up in the vacuum, if it’s a particularly powerful vacuum, not clogged up with animal hair, human hair, and dust. But then the vacuum radiates a warm smell of dead cockroach until the whole house is filled with what Lily insists is the smell of Dr. Pepper.
Palmetto bugs terrorize us through the house, crawling up through crevices, swooping down from ceilings, occupying every dark corner. They scurry across the ceiling, as Lily and I hide under a blanket. We clutch each other atop a dining room chair as they scuttle under foot. We scream horror-movie, guttural cries of true terror when Stephen chases us through the house with one of their dead bodies. Even when they aren’t around, I imagine them everywhere: all over my body, creeping up my widening thighs, or crawling over my pockmarked face with their furry legs and wavering antenna. Maybe they venture inside—my mouth, or my ears, or worst of all, my hair. My long, curly hair—they get lost, fluttering their wings through the tangled weave of auburn strands, the red shimmering against their dark bodies, their wings pounding against my head to fight their way out. The harder they struggle, the deeper they’re buried.
But all of that is behind me now that we’re getting out of Lake Shitty.
Robbie rides up beside me on his skates: They still have palmetto bugs in Gainesville, you know. You may be getting out of here, but you’ll still be in the swamp.
Yeah right, I say to the thick breeze in his wake. Moving away means a fresh start. I pull the tie out of my hair and let it fall over my shoulders. It feels heavy in the afternoon heat, shimmering with the glare of the sun. I get a clean slate.
“What’s queerness?” asked my 10-year-old niece. Holding my phone, she’d paused on a photograph of a sticker that said, Your queerness is divine.
Where to start? I went with, “It means, like, being gay or lesbian.”
“But that’s not YOU!?”
I froze, feeling my cheeks turn warm. I saw shock in the big, brown eyes fixated on mine. What else? Disgust, horror, judgment?
I had to look away. Staring at the table, I stammered. “I—um. A friend. She gave it to me.”
“Oh.” She continued to scroll. I casually remarked on unrelated travel photos while butterflies churned my stomach and scenarios raced through my mind.
We rarely get this one-on-one time together. This is the right moment.
But it’s late. She’s tired. I missed my chance. If I say something now, it’ll seem like a big thing. Her mom might get upset.
She lost her place in the photos and had to start again from the top. I waited to see if she’d land again on the sticker. She didn’t, but her return to the beginning of the reel felt like an energy shift, an opening to return to the topic in the most nonchalant way I could manage.
“Oh, so, the queer thing.” She stopped scrolling and looked at me, attentive, like she already knew. “I am that, actually.”
Before I could even process what to say next: “Oh, that’s OK!” She patted my arm twice, a silent There, there.
“Thank you,” I exhaled, releasing the in-breath I’d held for years. But her attention had already returned to the photos.
Astonished, I wondered if she’d actually understood what I said. With Mom, there were tears; with my sister, skepticism. Within myself, heaviness.
I couldn’t trust the ease. Overanalysis kicked in. Did she say “It’s OK” because she thinks it’s a flaw and loves me in spite of it?
Desperate to sound unaffected, I told her it was time to turn off the digital devices and get ready for bed. Then, my pounding heart muffled the sound of my voice as I quipped, “Hey, you know that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, right?”
An exasperated head tilt, playful eye roll, impish grin: “Ahh, I know.” She held up her hand, fingers curled into a ball: “Fist bump!”
I laughed. We fist bumped. The breezy, bemused ease of her gesture knocked my doubts aside, decentered my fearful core. With good-natured impatience, she was asking, Can we move on now? One day, I’ll thank her for showing me how.
I didn’t know my great-grandmother Esther—she died 13 years before I was born—but I know a little about her. Records my mother discovered say she came from Volyn, a region in the Pale of Settlement, the Russian Empire’s vast Jewish ghetto. As an ancestral homeland, Volyn doesn’t entice me; I don’t know which shtetl she lived in or whether it’s in present-day Ukraine, Poland or Belarus. When her daughter, my grandmother, remembered the place she lived until age 16, she called it simply The Old Country.
All the rest of what I know about my great-grandmother comes from things she gave my grandmother. Things my grandmother gave my mother, and my mother later gave me. Things from The Old Country.
When my great-grandmother packed for the voyage from Volyn to America, she didn’t pack light. Suspended from my kitchen ceiling, her three long-handled copper pots resemble a set of measuring cups, but at eye level they dwarf my biggest stockpot. I’ll never know what she cooked in them. Her recipes are long gone. And I’ll never know what spice mixes or medicines she concocted in the pocked brass mortar and pestle that now sit on a shelf in my dining room. Like the pots, they are industrial-sized. If I were to drop them, they could surely shatter floor tiles or phalanges. Esther’s brass candlesticks aren’t quite as heavy, but I imagine they’d be serviceable self-defense during a pogrom or a home invasion.
Clearly, my great-grandmother didn’t mind schlepping, or asking someone else to schlep, all this heavy metal. In 1909, after the overland and trans-Atlantic journey, an Ellis Island inspector with a buttonhook declared her husband’s eye infected and the family ineligible for entry. So they and all their belongings detoured to Argentina, where they remained for two years before returning and settling in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
About those candlesticks. I don’t know if Esther lit Shabbat candles, but I know her daughter did. Most Friday nights, Esther’s simple brass candlesticks graced my grandmother’s table, but on special holidays she used her silver set. After my grandmother died, my mother rarely used either pair, but she polished both regularly and kept them on display, each in its own nook of the gridded shelving that separated our dining room from our living room.
When, in her 90s, my mother fretted over the fate of the family heirlooms, my sister, named for Esther, took the silver candlesticks. I took the brass and copper. Like my mother, I put it all on display but never put it to use.
Three years ago my daughter married a man who observes the Sabbath as a day of rest. Esther’s candlesticks now live with them. For the first time in decades, the brass shows the wax drippings of weekly use.
It’s hard for me to picture Esther schlepping her housewares around the world. But I’m grateful for the light that shines on the face of her newborn great-great-great-granddaughter.
For more information on the Local Writer’s Showcase, please visit https://www.bethesda.org/bethesda/localwriters
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