My Mother's Daughter
I wore an oufit and looked like my mother.
Tell my mother that it happened again. It happened two days ago, while I was walking home from the office. I wore my hair, tucked into my navy Yankees hat, and it happened again.
My long curly hair can get too hot on my shoulders. At times I need relief. This was the case on Tuesday when I twisted, tucked and stuck my hair on top of my head to cover with my cap.
As I walked away from the elevator out in to the simmering street I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a storefront window. My white collared shirt was fucked up, my sleeves wonky and wrinkled, my Dad’s old blue cashmere sweater shoved into a breaking straw summer top-handle bag, my jangling keys about to fall, my blue jeans scraping the ground of the sidewalk’s grime, and my nearly destroyed nude ballet flats that suffered severe burns on a previous Europe summer trip. If a stranger were to blink, I could have been the poor man’s blonde Jane Birkin.
But I wasn’t. I was her. I was my mother in the reflection. The way her hair always grazes her square jaw when she tucks it under her straw hat. Her love for anything boot cut. Her dimples in the sun. The soft round of her chin. Our profiles both square and taut.
When I was young, people would ask my mother where I got my blonde hair and light eyes. My mother, a brown-eyed brunette, would respond back “I married a Norwegian.” She never took the credit. But I am my mother in every stroke. And if you look long enough you can see her hand in all of me. Every line. Every gesture.
This is something I come to now know. And get reminded of, on Tuesday’s walking home from my 9-5. When my cap sits just right. When I feel that pep in my step and a song in my pocket. When I realize that I am her best parts and worst hair days. I could not have come from anyone else.
I am my mother’s daughter.
Incredibly written. Last line gave me chills.