Petals and Water

The smell of rose water reminds me of my mother, although she never used it.

There was a woman, a handful of years older than me, that would use it on her face at night.   A found this woman, a friend of a friend, to be beautiful. Her parents from Argentina; herself born in a town in New Jersey.

One day, I thought, when I am older, I will do the same ritual, in order to look like her.

(pause)

My aunt, the one woman in my extended family to have married a man with money, sold Mary Kay Cosmetics in her spare time. When I visited their home, which felt like a mansion at the time, she would carefully go over the three steps of cleansing one's face. After washing and toning her face with liquids and pearlized drops of cleanser from the tiny and pink containers, she would tell me that the last step was to moisturize.

She would reach a miniature spatula into a small tub of cream, explaining that it kept the oil from one's fingers from contaminating the jar, then transfer the small dollop onto her middle finger.

She would then dot her face in five places: Her forehead, her chin, each cheek, then her nose.

Father 

son 

holy 

ghost          

I would hear in my head



Although there was an extra step.


k.

(image: a close up of a depiction of Mater Dolorosa. I believe this is Dirk Bouts, 1460)