Poetry, Essays, and Reflections
LINDA MASON HUNTER: Journalist, Author & Radio Host
Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
© Linda Hunter, HunterInk
Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
© Linda Hunter, HunterInk
Mom and Dad are old now, very old. He is 95 and she’s 94. They live independently in an apartment in a fancy senior center Mother chose because it resembles a cruise ship—three restaurants, a bar, a gym, swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, massage, salon, you-name-it. My dad, a dedicated farm boy, does not enjoy it. He calls the residents “inmates” to their faces and tells them they’ve come here to die—which may be true but no one wants to hear that, especially after they’ve spent their life savings to join this exclusive club.
Though they’ve denied the inevitable until now, Mom and Dad recently had “The Talk” and decided they, too, are mortal. Dad exercises for 90 minutes three times a week, watches his diet, and remains ornery as an unbroke horse. Mother is frail as dandelion fluff and finds it difficult to breathe. Evidently she’s resigned to her mortality, which prompts a nap-time phone call to me.
“I’ve got a task for you,” she summons in a raspy whisper. “It’s bloody, so be prepared.”
Oh great. Blood. Not just anybody’s blood, either. Mother’s blood. The sight of anyone’s blood but my own makes me woozy, my knees buckle, my vision blurs. This is not going to be pretty.
I wait a few days, hoping Mother will forget. When I show up at her door she greets me with uncustomary affection. “I’m so glad to see you. You’ve come to re-pierce my ears.”
“No, Mom. I’m not the one to do it,” I plead, recoiling. “Ask the woman who does your nails. Or your hair stylist. Or a nurse. Not me.”
“Bring me my diamond posts,” she demands. “You’re the only one I trust.”
An odd choice for we have never been close. She is earth-bound. I fly. She came of age during the Great Depression amid thrift, frugality, and privation. I came of age in the rebellious Sixties breaking rules, living on my own terms. While she prefers adorning herself with priceless artifacts, ivory bracelets, and lizard skin shoes, I sport blue jeans, t-shirts, and unshaven legs. In short, we have absolutely nothing in common and cannot carry on a meaningful conversation for more than three minutes.
Her motherly advice to me, her only daughter, remains, “Looking good is better than feeling good.” Appearances trump truth. She hoards clothes, many with the price tag still on them. Even today in their tiny apartment stuffed closets attest to her “quantity not quality” methodology.
Two years ago, as I put Mom in Depends and dressed her in sweat pants and loose shirts, her “clothes consultant” came to call, seducing her with $350 faux suede suits that hang in her closet unworn. With numb feet and fingertips, she can’t zip a zipper, button a button, tie a shoe, or remove a price tag, but she can write checks, and she does, in spidery script, to buy clothes, for entertainment and for friendship. My, how she loves to dress.
While such plunder is obviously disturbing, her miserly hoarding is equally so. Like Dickens’ Scrooge she keeps her jewels and furs under lock and key, reminiscent of the mindless eating machines in “Finding Nemo” who relentlessly screech one word, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” before running into a window and breaking their beaks. Such is the perversity in her nature that nearly every gift she’s purchased for me in the last 50 years she’s kept for herself, and told me about it, with relish.
Now, rummaging through her jewelry chest looking for diamond earrings, I remember the few times I’ve been granted this privilege. Her jewelry always fascinated me, but it’s her earrings I remember most. She was never without them. Even as young mother wielding a garden hoe, dressed in boy shorts and a polka dot halter top, she wore Bakelite earrings in crimson, emerald, and melon. They defined who she was.
“What’s taking so long?” Dad asks, sneaking up on me, afraid I’ll pocket a trifle or two.
A bit more rummaging uncovers two pair of diamond posts—one with sparkly round stones, the other more subdued teardrops. “Which ones?” I ask Mother good-naturedly, holding both pairs out in my hand.
“The round ones, don’t you think?” It’s not a question. She’s already made up her mind.
“Round ones it is,” I proclaim, wheeling her chair into brighter light so I can see better through my bifocals. Amid the freckles and crevices of her ear lobes, I cannot discern the original piercings. “How long has it been?” I ask.
The rasp, the quaver. “A year, or two.” Then a defiant, “Don’t worry about hurting me.” My mother sits still as Whistler’s, her hands peacefully folded in her lap, her face a mask of determination. She means it. So I stab her right lobe with the sharp end of a diamond post. On the second stab I find the canal, then push push push to break through to the other side.
I savor the victory a moment before tightening the screw. “How tight?” I ask, not wanting to hurt her.
“As tight as you can get it,” is her firm reply. “I’m not going to ever take them off.” Apparently, Mother has given her dying a great deal of thought and has decided to show up at the Pearly Gates with one-caret diamond studs in each ear.
Miraculously, I finish the second ear without a whimper of blood. As she admires her refection in a mirror Mother’s eyes hold a hint of the old sparkle. “They go with everything, don’t you think?” she says with satisfaction.
I return the rejected teardrops to the third drawer of her over-stuffed jewelry chest. She doesn’t offer. I learned years ago not to ask.
Linda Mason Hunter splits her time between her homes in Iowa and Vancouver, British Columbia. Formerly an editor with the Des Moines Register, Rodale Press and Meredith Corporation, Linda has written and produced 17 books. Her first book, The Healthy Home: An Attic-To-Basement Guide to Toxin-Free Living (Rodale Press), was favorably reviewed in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, including The New York Times, leading to an appearance on ABC TV’s “Good Morning, America.”
She is also the author of the award-winning Three Green Rats: An Eco Tale (Ink Pinn Press), which was a finalist for Foreword Reviews Book of the Year (2013) and runner-up for best early chapter book, fiction, in Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards (2013). Please see an excerpt from the book HERE.
Linda also hosts “The Green Zone” daily on KFMG 98.9 FM in Des Moines.
The above narrative essay is part of a memoir Linda is currently working on.
She is also the author of the award-winning Three Green Rats: An Eco Tale (Ink Pinn Press), which was a finalist for Foreword Reviews Book of the Year (2013) and runner-up for best early chapter book, fiction, in Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards (2013). Please see an excerpt from the book HERE.
Linda also hosts “The Green Zone” daily on KFMG 98.9 FM in Des Moines.
The above narrative essay is part of a memoir Linda is currently working on.
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