BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Sunday is Mother's Day--as if you cared. If your mother's like me, she doesn't expect a thing. It's enough to know the child she sacrificed her life for--working and slaving 24 hours a day--is probably smoking a $49 cigar in a bar somewhere while she warms up a can of spaghetti.

You could invite your mother over for leftovers from one of your fancy dinner parties. It would mean the world to her to sit at your table and just drink a glass of water. She's always been content with crumbs. That old robe you must have bought at the Salvation Army. That cheap bottle of whiskey. The Clapper. She's not a big wheel like you.

Mrs. Krucek's children treat her like a queen. Thomas bought her an adjustable bed. April and Amber went in on the Rascal, which you would know is an electric cart if all you ever did is watch re-runs of Quincy day in and day out because no one ever calls and invites you anywhere. Did Mrs. Krucek iron her children's underwear? No. And her mashed potatoes are from a box.

The word "mother" comes from the Latin martyr: to kill yourself for others. It starts when a mother has to give up wearing a bikini in her ninth month of pregnancy and continues through breast-feeding when she lets you suck the very life out of her. No wonder she's just a shell. Don't trouble yourself about her now that she's practically at death's doorstep.

She wouldn't want you to be alarmed by the sight of her bloody knees, the knees she crawled across broken glass on to bring your lunch to school when you were hung over from partying all night while she did your chemistry homework by the dim glow of a 5 watt flashlight because the electricity got turned off when she used all the money to bail you out of jail. Knee pads are a great gift idea.

Why does everybody always talk about June Cleaver? Like she's the only mother. Some of us were Wilma Flintstone, doing everything with the most primitive appliances. We didn't even have a trash compactor.

Some guy in L.A. is divorcing his mother because she burnt a cigarette hole in the leather interior of his BMW. Maybe she should have divorced him when he bit a hole in her house shoe. Or when he pooped in the pool at the country club. But no--a mother would never do such as thing. A mother gives and gives until there's nothing left.

Don't trouble yourself about Mother's Day. It's enough to know you're having martinis with the high society friends you like more than your own flesh and blood. Maybe you could at least think of your mother while you chit chat with some movie star. Think of how giving birth to you ruined her figure and blew her chances of being a movie star herself. Think of the noise she made when she fell in that hole.

Far be it from me to remind you she might not live to see Mother's Day '99.

One crumb. She would cherish the memory until the day she died, which could be any minute. You never can tell about these things. One day somebody's the picture of health. The next day they're dead.

Too good. I was too good to my children.

The least you could do is call.