WRINKLES IN TIME

Did you ever think you might bury the wrong person? Well, Dear Reader, I not only thought about it, I did it.

Here are the intimate details:

It all started when I was ten years old, with a bathroom door that wouldn't shut. At that age it was my habit to listen for the squeak of my Mother’s bed springs as she roused herself each morning. Promptly at seven, l would hear her door knob rotate, followed by the padding of her leather slippers as she eased toward the bathroom door. At her touch, it brushed open against the carpet with a subtle swishing sound. When pushed to close, its metallic tongue inserted itself into the latch with a faint click but always failed to engage, thus, allowing the door to swing back a bit, away from its frame. The one-inch crack that resulted gave me the opportunity to lurk outside the door where I could swoon over Mother’s reflection in the mirror while she prepared her face for the day.

She began the daily ritual by pulling her jet hair behind her ears and tying it in place with a shoe string. She then held a washcloth from the nearby cupboard under the open sink faucet until it was damp with water. A quick rub with a bar of soap applied a white film across the fabric. With the cloth prepared, Mother rubbed it down both sides of her nose and into the depressions at its base where it met her cheeks. With swift rotating motions of her hand, she moved the cloth deftly around her face and downward to her neck. On a second pass, she pressed harder on the cloth until a rosy glow appeared on her skin from the hairline above her forehead to her collarbone. A rinse of the washcloth and her hand guided the moist fabric lightly around and back and forth across her skin, all the while moving her face closer and closer to the mirror to scrutinize, to ensure all traces of unwanted nighttime debris had been flushed away.

I don’t think Mother ever saw me watching. If she did, she never let on. Well, maybe one time she did. I had left my room and taken my secretive position outside the bathroom door. I faced her direction and stared at her reflection through the crack. I marveled at how thorough she was as she bent her head close to the mirror and scrutinized her newly-bathed skin, letting a fingernail dig at a recent wrinkle that had appeared above her chin.

All at once there was a spark of recognition. Our wide-open eyes met through the crack in a momentary stare—for only a second, but that was enough. Her lips pursed. The corners of her mouth twitched. She yanked a Kleenex out of its box and made a final jerky sweep along her nose, over one cheek, and across her forehead. She then pulled her bathrobe tightly around her body and exited in a flurry from the room, intentionally avoiding my stare.

Okay, Reader, let’s skip the boring mid-life crises and head into the real climax of this story-- eighty-five years later. As you would expect, by the time Mother had reached the age of ninety-five, her face had suffered the merciless ravages of time. Her once-satiny-smooth forehead, the firm areas near the corners of her ocean-blue eyes, her pale pink mouth, and the once-smoothest-places-of-all, the doeskin under her eyes, seethed with twisted wrinkles.

Obviously, I’m no longer ten because Mother is now ninety-five. At this point in the story, I’m standing in a stuffy room with a few family members. Incense taints the air. Conversations are hushed or non-existent. Straight-backed chairs line the rear wall, but no one is seated. The subdued light from two pole lamps bathes the room in petunia pink. I'm staring at the woman in the coffin. Because I'm her closest living kin, those in the room have left me the responsibility of approving the undertaker’s handiwork so we can get her buried.

But who is this woman? I’ve been told she’s my mother, but she can’t be. This woman’s face is mannequin smooth. When Mother neared the end of life, it was her face that communicated with me. I knew if she was ill or in pain or if she needed something. I could read the wrinkles. It was the wrinkles that told me how she was feeling. The woman in the casket with the manikin face doesn’t have any. She can't be Mother.

“But, on the other hand,” I said, ”someone’s got to be buried.”

So, we buried what we had.