My mother was born in Paris but to very provincial Spanish parents. She married my father when she was 23, and he whisked her away to New Jersey to live. Princeton, but still. She had a lot of adjusting to do.
By the time I was born ten years later, you'd think she would have had ample time to acclimate. But, she clung to her old-fashioned, handed- down-by- Spanish -grandmother-ways. She steadfastly refused to succumb to the allure of the Breck Girl... She put lemon juice on my hair to lighten it, olive oil to moisturize it, and vinegar on to detangle it. I went to school smelling like salad.
Lunchtime was equally traumatic. Everyone else had nice, shiny metal lunch boxes bursting with cultural relevancy and advertising. I had a brown paper bag. The over-sized one my mother got from the grocery store. Wrinkled from multiple uses.
Every mother needs a signature cookie. Even if it’s one you buy—like a fresh-from-the-bag Pepperidge Farm Milano. Or a local, corner-bakery, purchased elephant ear. Of course, it’s best, when the kids look back, if the signature cookie is one you baked.
Around our house in those days, if you didn’t clean up your room you went to bed without dessert. Not just a mess in your own room, either. If you left a mess anywhere and refused to be responsible for it—reasons ranging from recalcitrance to outright sloth—no matter! There was NO EXCUSE FOR IT! You hit the sack with a hole in your belly. Tough patooties. That was the law of the land.
My mother’s name is Gladys, and the name just doesn’t fit her.
The press representative agreed to let me into the Courbet retrospective a day before the preview. My mother and I were in New York for a couple of days before heading up to Westport, Connecticut to attend a memorial service for her sister, my aunt Judy. Our visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be our own private memorial.