By Linda Miller

She emerges from the hallway without a blouse or maybe she’s wearing one that’s totally unbuttoned, like she’s preparing for a sordid tryst steps away in the kitchen. Not even the thick towel slung over her right shoulder camouflages the sight of her bra or slightly wrinkled cleavage.

“MOM! Just walk right through the living room in your bra! I can’t believe you do that,” I squawk.

Today she’s pairing her cross-your-heart Playtex bra with shorts because it’s summertime. But the bottom half of her wardrobe changes with the seasons—pants in winter, pedal pushers during the in-between times. For the record I hate those pedal pushers but fashion’s hardly the point.

Mom is walking around the house half undressed, and she doesn’t seem to care. 

Only I care. I’m the one in the throes of a conniption fit, 60s slang for teenagers like me who flip out when their mothers don’t act like mothers, but careless, carefree exhibitionists.

What’s next, I wonder. A nudist colony?

“Can’t you do that in the bathroom?” I shriek. “Someone could come to the door. What then Mom?”

When she passes in front of me, my eyes shoot to the bra straps pressing into her shoulders and then to the scar on her back, beneath the left scapula. As a kid she had pneumonia and landed in the hospital to have fluid drained from her chest. The 35-year-old scar looks like a deformed fish-hook. I’m spellbound by its taut, off-white ugliness.

There’s no watching TV now. With this spectacle of straps, bulges, wrinkles, and elastic, I’m up and moving. I zip from front door to side door, scoping out the entryways and sidewalks for friends or neighbors who might approach, ring the doorbell and see my mother practically topless, washing her hair in front of the kitchen sink.

I follow her as far as the refrigerator and before I can say another word, she turns and says, “You worry too much.”

No wonder she’s at the sink salon today. She and Dad are going to a class reunion, and preparations for a big night out are underway. Within the hour Mom will have her short, fine hair washed, dried, and neatly secured with those pink and black brush rollers, the kind that produce serious, Saturday-night poof. I, on the other hand, will be sitting at home with my dirty hair and younger brother watching “Adam-12” and “Emergency!,” another sore spot that contributes to my peevishness.

A social event of this magnitude buoys Mom’s spirits, and she actually gets a little smart-assy with me when I start to gripe. As she passed me moments ago she produced a light, treacly Snow White-kind of humming that lets me know, in advance, that she couldn’t care less about my point of view.

“Really funny, Mom.” She’s defiant. Kid-proof. Daughter proof. Her Playtex bra is like a suit of armor, deflecting every verbal dagger thrown her way.

Now she’s bent over the sink with the spray attachment in her right hand, circling her head. The tap provides a strong rush of water and shuts down all conversation. From now on, I’ll have to yell to get her attention. Considering how much of a lather I’m in, shouting comes as a welcome release.

“Mom,” I boom. “You better be fast because all the kids are going to Booster Club practice and they might see you.” The high school and all its practice fields lay just beyond our backyard, attracting a steady stream of boys in shoulder pads and jerseys treading perilously close to our wide-open doors, a summertime norm that increases my vigilance from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1.

“What?” she says, as she turns with thick, fragrant foam oozing down her cheeks.

“Are you FINISHED?” I holler. “There’re tons of kids walking to football practice. You need to get out of here.”

“Just about done,” she yells during the second rinse. I heave a sigh of agitated protest and return to my post in between the living room and kitchen, where I reconnoiter foot traffic crossing two intersecting streets.

While searching for potential threats, I plot damage-control strategy. If someone knocks I’ll answer and use a mid-door body block to obscure the kitchen view. If it’s a friend, I’ll step outside for a secretive chat, so I’ll need to conjure up a highly classified problem that’s too sensitive to be overhead inside. At some point, I’ll need to execute because the moment will arrive. After all, I live in a small town and people pop up at our doorstep all day long. Like the dry cleaner delivering Dad’s sport coat or the baker from Walnutport with the special rye bread. And mothers everywhere in the neighborhood often stroll from house to house with oversized white envelopes collecting for March of Dimes or Muscular Dystrophy or some other sad disease.

Imagine the consequences should some blabber-mouth like Wilma Davis see her! She’d spread that story around to the whole neighborhood. And then those women would retell the tale in their homes. And maybe their kids, my classmates, would overhear it. And then they’d carry the whole sordid image to school. In a few days everyone would know it and Wayne Wallace would yell, “Hey Linda, can I come over to your house next shampoo day?” Total ruination. I’d be tainted forever in the halls of Slatington High School.

But Mom never thinks about “what if.” She’s focused on the now, and my protests go down the drain, along with the Vo5 inspired suds.

When she’s done she squeezes water out of her hair and wraps the towel around her head in a turban. And then it all happens in reverse. This time it’s a full-on view of her in her bra. I look Mom square in the eye, with an expression that fuses my disgust, relief, and a quick eye-roll all in one.

“Thank GOD you’re finished,” I add, with a big dose of my own smartass thrown in for effect. She ignores me. Not one syllable of rebuttal. And I’m sort of looking to mix it up with her. Not a full blown fight but a little verbal skirmish. Just the two of us. But she never bites and I never say more because really, I hate fighting. Just not my thing. Get back to “American Bandstand,” I say to myself.

Our clash of wills goes on like this for years, and I can report that Mom never capitulated to my demands or, amazingly, got caught by an unexpected visitor. Fifty years later I can still see her commanding the room with her brisk pace, and I now realize it wasn’t just the bra that drove me to the border of Conniption-ville. I also envied Mom’s backbone. Not the one on full display, but the figurative one that gave her moxie. Unlike me, who criticized and camouflaged every little imperfection with a baggy sweater or one-piece bathing suit, she accepted herself unconditionally. To the world she declared, “Here I am, folks. I think I look perfectly fine,” while my full-time inner critic murmured, “I think this outfit is OK, world. What do you think?Does it make me look fat?”

Whether she was dressed for church, for shopping or for a short walk through the living room, Mom carried herself with assurance. She stood proud and tall in her bra and Bermuda shorts, and when she rinsed the last bit of soap off her face and toweled off, she’d glide through the living room and fix a half-smile on her face.

“See, all done.”

On those days she patiently accepted my rage because that’s the worst she ever got from me. My perceived physical deficits occupied me full time, so I had no extra energy to spend on teenage rebellion. In between homework and cheerleading practice and hanging out with friends, I had no room for delinquency. Drinking? Not me. I’m not looking for trouble, plus Coke tastes so much better than beer. Cigarettes? Not after hearing Dad’s phlegmy, smoker’s cough in the mornings. Staying out late? Not likely. A dateless wonder like me is always tucked in by 9:30—that’s when I finish with the latest issue of Teen magazine. With stories like “Waist Disposal: Problem Solved” and “Are You Wearing Last Year’s Face?,” I’ll soon obtain a leaner body, a serious boyfriend, a class ring from my steady, and a perfect life, in that exact order.

But Mom had no such hang-ups. Once or twice a week she flagrantly displayed her body in ways I thought unthinkable. And it violated everything I thought her to be—wise, classy, and commonsensical. She never buckled because, for whatever reason, she liked her system. The sink was easier; the spray attachment was quicker; skipping the blouse was one less thing to carry. The kitchen salon’s benefits far outweighed the storm of abuse she took from me or the risk of being caught.

Mom simply did things her way, no matter who howled in the background. And now, at age 65, I feel more like her than I ever have. I’ve finally arrived in a place she always inhabited—the land of who cares, do what works for you.

Wish I would have arrived sooner, but what counts is that I’m here. At long last I please myself first. And I don’t worry about what others will say or think. Some days, I almost wish I’d switch to washing my hair in the kitchen sink, just so I could walk through the house in my sweatpants and a bra and not care about who might catch a glimpse.

Me, worry? Not anymore.

Guest essay written by Linda Miller. Linda has worked in newspapers, magazines and in higher education public relations. She’s devoted most of her freelance writing during the past three years to memoir and the happy retelling of growing up in Slatington, PA, with her mother, father and younger brother. Her work has appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Sincerely Magazine, Dead Housekeeping, the Furious Gazelle and this month, the Penn State College of Medicine’s literary journal Wild Onions. She lives with her husband in Hershey, PA.

Photo by Leslie Tresher.

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