The Airbrush

**At the time that I wrote this we did not know that my mother was descending into dementia. But this piece, written in early 2017 and shared at the Madison, Wisconsin “Listen to Your Mother” production, now paints an accurate picture of what dementia looks like to our loved ones and to us, including mood changes, fears and frustrations. This is my first Mother’s Day without her. I am sharing in her memory.** 

My mother sometimes shops on television.

It is early morning on the West Coast. 

She wakes me and hands me a box. “Please teach me how to use this”, she says. “What is this?”, I ask. When I open it, I find an electric airbrush-makeup device.

“Mom”, I ask, “why did you buy this?”

“Because”, she says, “I want to hide my wrinkles.”

My mother has declared, now that she is eighty years’ old, that she can no longer wear printed pants. “It’s not something that someone does when they are eighty”, she says. She tells me that she has to buy a new phone —that the old one is broken, and that the new printer is broken. 

But really she has forgotten how to use them. In her refrigerator there are mushrooms. And cantaloupe. And cherry tomatoes. All outdated. She has forgotten to eat them. When I visit her, I sneak the rotted foods into the garbage when she is not looking so she will not be angry with me. I am tiptoeing around her. We have a complicated relationship. 

My mother sometimes rages. As I result, I am guarded. When she starts to wind up, I give her some of the chocolate I have stockpiled just for this purpose. Or, I make her a pina colada. 

Or I take a sedative.

She can be charming and chatty. She was brilliant in her career as an educator. She used to sing beautifully. She used to play the piano. She used to perform on stage. She was always the lead –and the smartest one in the room. She knows that she is forgetting things. It makes her angry. And scared.

I know that it is not her fault. I know that she is angry with her own brain. 

She is frightened of losing her astonishing self.

I totally get this.

My mother, still, wants everything to be perfect. She still wants me to be perfect.

I think it is how she was raised. Her mother, my grandmother, was raised in an orphanage. She tried to be perfect so she would be wanted. So she raised my mother with many rules –and maybe with love that was a little less than unconditional…so that she could earn being wanted.

Trying to earn love is freaking exhausting. 

So my mother, in the way that she knew, raised me with rules. With perfection. When we had our children I hoped that they would always feel that I loved them…that they didn’t have to do or be anything special to get my approval. But that didn’t change who I was –or my need to be wanted. This meant that I volunteered way too much –that I always did too much as a mother –and I burned myself out.

As my own mother ages (and especially since my father’s death) I am acutely aware that my she is all that I have left and that my time with her is precious –despite my need for stockpiling chocolate & pina colada mix –And my occasional need for a sedative.

So it is with the greatest kindness I can muster that I pull the airbrush out of its box and choose the makeup color that matches her skin. She disappears from the room and returns with a towel around her neck. “I am ready”, she says.

I remember thirty years ago when Mom met my stepfather. Her body had softened over time and she was self-conscious about her shape and concerned about her stretch marks–and her scars. At the time he told her he was honored by her imperfections. These were the evidence of her bringing other lives into the world. Our stretchmarks mean that we have stretched ourselves for others.

Now, at eighty, my mother is worried about covering her wrinkles. She believes that the airbrush will bring her more love. For me, I cover up my own need for love by wearing lipstick and the color orange. 

We all airbrush our wrinkles and our disappointments in our own way.

I cannot tell my mother that she will forget how to use the airbrush as soon as I get on the plane to return home…but that will surely happen.

So I sigh. 

I put on my glasses and begin to read the directions.I unwrapt he makeup bottle and put six drops of color into the wand. “Close your eyes and your mouth”, I say. “This might tickle.”

I begin to airbrush the makeup onto her face. A few sweeps of the device and I am done.

“How do I look?”, she asks. 

Although I am thinking: ”Mom…you look like a woman who has lived…who is still living.” — I tell her:

“You look luminous.”