Beyond Mom

Tribute to Heather Jean on Mothers Day:

Beyond Mom

By: Jill Koenigsdorf

            

            There comes a time in every child’s life when they experience the devastating realization that their mother might actually have a life outside of cutting the crusts off bologna sandwiches. My own lightening bolt moment arrived at the age of twelve, when I discovered my mother’s lingerie drawer. I was snooping around in my parents’ bedroom when I opened this particular nook-of-no-return. My mother’s perfume wafted from its depths like an escaping genie, and the first thing I saw was stockings, silk stockings, unsnagged and tenderly cocooned in tissue paper. There was a black pair amongst the others that had a seam running from heel to thigh, and for some reason, that made me cover my mouth with my hand and giggle wildly. 

            The stockings would have to be held up by something…enter: the pink satin garter belt nestled alongside. And what was this? A “shortie” girdle in a color called “nude?”  Next to it: a black bra with a tiny rosebud sewn in between the cups. More excavation yielded a stiff white corset that I wanted badly to try on, but did not dare due to a daunting number of clasps, as well as its intimidating cup size. My mother had tucked sachets in between all her sinuous half-slips and strapless wonders. I touched the items tentatively, reverently, sensing that I was in the realm of something private and adult.

            For days after that I could not meet her eye. There she was in my father’s stained, oversized tee-shirt and some madras Bermuda shorts, huffing and puffing in front of the black and white T.V. as Jack LaLanne encouraged her to “give him a pretty smile.” I watched her surreptitiously, with a new fascination, but also some confusion, as if my real mother, the one who embarrassed me by belting out show tunes when she drove the carpool, the one who molded ground beef into loaves, then baked it with ketchup as the top layer, had been replaced by a woman who wore sexy undergarments.

            But who was she wearing them for? My father? They fought like cats and dogs when he got home late from work, or when he neglected to ask her about her own day when he finally did walk through the door. Herself? This would require more research. In the weeks that followed, I would race up to their bedroom whenever I had the house to myself. Under her mattress, I found copies of Fear of Flying and The Happy Hooker. In the drawer of the bedside table, I found hormone pills and a Revlon lipstick called “Love That Red.”  Ours was a testosterone-heavy household, two teenaged boys and my father. I was supposed to be on the girls’ team, but was a rabid tomboy, spending every waking hour on my trampoline or riding horses or fishing. My mom could have used an ally.

            My mother has been gone now for fifteen years, but every Mothers Day I think of that lingerie drawer and it makes me miss her anew. I always think if she had been born even a decade later, she would not have had to hide those things that made her feel sensual and alive. She had been a registered nurse when she met my father, and often spoke fondly of her career.  I used to invent great feminist scenarios for her: that she returns to work, that she flees the suburbs, that she writes her memoirs.  She never did any of those things, but each time I returned home I checked, and the lingerie drawer was still tended to and in tact. And shortly before she died, I was given the great gift of being able to paint her fingernails, just chat with her a while, holding her hands and daubing each nail with a color I had found called: “Love That Red.”