Pink Frosting

Mother does not want to talk about it. Pink is a weak colour, like frosting that melts before the cake has cooled. It fades into the background, is washed out, and looks too soft. It lacks sparkle and vibrancy. She finds it almost sickly and owns nothing pink except for what her mother had dressed her in as a baby. That gentle hue gets dirty, and quickly. Mother is not helping me pick out a prom dress, if you're thinking along those lines. She is not going through my closet either, or doing my laundry. Mother does not choose what looks best on me. She is not really a mother in that way. She is not even here. Mother is doing what is best for her. She is colouring her own world. She would much rather wear white because it makes a fashion statement, the way black does. There is no little pink dress, and it is stereotypically unprofessional to wear pink to work. It never carried any weight with her, and she never allowed herself to understand why, but I do. As her daughter, I could not have been pinker when I was born.

It is as easy to get through life without me as it is for her to do without the colour of softness. Seeing others wear clothing that blushes or declaring that their favourite colour is that one never makes an impression on her, nor changes her opinion of people. She does not hate pink outright, but she cannot conceal the coldness she feels towards it any more than I can warm up to her. Mother only decides to dislike the lightness and not accept it. As part of her independence, it is an insignificance she can wield to assert, if only to herself, that she was worth taking a stand for in her young adult life. She did not have to conform to the crowd or listen to anyone. Between her and pink, I was barely part of the equation.

Pink and I knew where we stood with her and never pushed ourselves on her in the same way a rose doesn’t force its fragrance on a person. A flower only knows how to hold her place with eyes lowered—humble, respectful and patient. Pink still shows up, after all.

“I don’t cease to exist just because you won’t have anything to do with me,” it says wordlessly. “To be patient is all that's required of me, even if you don't know how hard it is. I won't lose hope. I'm light, but. I have more worth and value than you can see now. These realities will wait for you, and I’ll be here, still visible.”

"I'll be worth it."

Mother never saw it coming. The years landed on her doorstep all at once, and they demanded an entry. Thugs, they’d become. It had happened almost overnight, like storm clouds gathering and multiplying. They brought signs and certainties that didn't bode well for Mother.

Wrinkles start breaking the surface of her skin and don't heal like my pimples do, but stay with a permanence more like acne scars. Gray hairs push out from where lustrous brown locks used to cascade. Her vision, which had always been clear and carefree, has now deteriorated. It's not quite the good gift originally intended. Her unabated strength turns cruelly on her, imposing limits. Muscles require added exertion just to be maintained. Pains throb and aches linger. Joints are wearing out and need to be replaced long before a lifespan can be considered complete.

What's left is a body that no longer wants to cooperate with a willing mind and a heart still beating with youth. Mother's soul is weary, harder to restore and dimmer with the passage of time. But where she sees hopelessness, I see a transformation that glimmers with potential.

She knew aging was real. All her life, she watched it at work in others, but it never made much of an impact on her world. She saw death but paid so little attention to getting older that it was easy for her to ignore it and forget it was measured in years she was letting slip by.

She never questioned her invincibility. Age would never come to call on her, and certainly not the same way.

“I’ll handle it so much better,” she’d vowed to herself. She couldn't imagine it because she couldn't see it happening to her.

"What are they doing wrong? Why are they giving up? It won't be the same for me. I can fight it and win. I can reverse it." She would keep doing what she'd always done.

"It's a lifetime from now."

She troubled herself with it about as much as she needed to wear pink. She was asserting her independence from aging in the very same way. She'd make sure it knew where it stood with her. I was in good company. With eggshells left in the batter, the cake has collapsed—an abandoned project that was mishandled from the start.

Gray is not the colour of age. Neither is black, as one would think of negativity. Age has no colour at all. It has a presence and demands respect, or at least Mother’s full attention. It knows it doesn’t have to raise its voice to make itself heard. The things it says cannot be ignored and are spoken with a strength that grows in volume as the years pass. In her refusal to befriend it, Mom is better off for it, even if I'm not. Age doesn't want to be embraced. Mom doesn't have to expend the energy to make it her enemy, either, because it couldn't care less. All it wants is for her to hear what it's saying. It won't lie. And yes, she can fight off some of its blows, but she’d been in the ring with it all her life. It had been throwing her punches she’d been able to withstand up to this point. Now, it's gaining strength because age and youth can only spar for so long before one wins out. Age wants nothing but to rip Mother off. Betrayal is its strong suit. It’s ugly and it’s painful and it makes a brutal joke out of a life that has so much more to give, if maybe not yet to me. However, while it makes everything a battle for Mother, it's about to meet its match with me.

My time is in the offing. Mother's youth had slowly waned. The days when the things she'd taken a stand on, or been independent of, are turning fast. What isn't essential is replaced, and what's becoming unimportant is forgotten. I am left in the camp of what can no longer be ignored.

Age is Mother's enemy, and it’s mine too. If anyone tells me that it’s a blessing of grand proportions to get older, I would be right to be skeptical. Common sense tells me otherwise because advancing in years happens to everyone. If it discourages, depresses and makes loneliness easy and familiar, we should not want to get older. It’s unnatural. A precursor to death is nothing to celebrate. Its occasion does not call for cake. Death is more to be desired when age strives to release us from the ravages that only it can decide we should suffer.

For Mother and me, pink makes its resurgence in this deliberate dismantling of life. What makes it something of value to us now? It has to do with the desperation of advancing in years. Pink used to be trivial, childish and chosen at random to represent independence. Now it's a bearer of comfort that opens its arms to embrace lost years and what they want to restore.

She now wears pink unapologetically.

She used to be a little girl, then grew to be a young girl, and then a young woman, albeit rebellious. She never wanted to embrace her femininity because that would have made her vulnerable and genuine and ready to grow up. Instead, she recklessly squandered her young womanhood and threw away the responsibilities that came with it. Its challenges and opportunities were strewn across her life, as far away from herself, from pink and from me as possible. Pink was the accidental agent of a girl who learned to be a female without having learned to be a woman.

My mother looks at me now without disdain or any indifference in her eyes. She has come to accept me, to love me as a daughter and to like everything about me. I remind her of herself, she says absentmindedly, because she's forgotten herself. Her reward is in her femininity. It hasn't been stolen by multiplication or subtraction of years, depending on how age tries to misconstrue living them. Age makes much ado about numbers, but my mother's beauty can be stockpiled, and for what it’s worth to us both, pink makes a difference. Pink is more than soft, pretty, light and lovely. It has a power that age doesn’t know what to do with, not in either of our lives. Beauty is the icing and not the cake. Age gets confused when confronted with its own limitations. A little bit of its strength is taken away. Its identity is blurred and its voice is muffled.

My mother's particular shade of pink is girlish again and still full of youth. It always blushes and is forever caressing and lavishing affection. It doesn’t discriminate. Men can wear it. Police officers wear it in October. Hey, the Ribbon is pink. While age is a criminal, pink is innocent. Age distorts and does everything possible to change appearances into what was never meant to be. Pink's smile has nothing to hide. It has a life of its own and lives forever. Mom lets it do what she wouldn’t before. It does it well because of all the time it took her to take me back.

Age has its limits, and yes, it does end in death, but this proves how weak it really is. Pink is so much more intelligent. And so is Mom.

Mom is washing the dishes that were left in the sink last night. The sight endears her all the more to me. I study her for a moment in her soft, pink bathrobe that's a bit big on her. She has it wrapped tightly around her tiny waist as though it were made especially for her. I notice how diminutive her back seems. Her frame is not large. She’s not frail, by any means, but more feminine than so many women have yet to learn how to be. Slightly bent over the sink as she is, and intent on her task, the gentle curve of her back seems to need a strong barrier of protection she cannot see she needs. A woman does not have to be any particular age to forget her fragility.

Mom is aware of my presence behind her and turns her head to see me standing there. What was once left to collapse in the pan, we now dare to redeem with frosting.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," she says with a smile.

Her way of greeting me now welcomes me back and invites us both to the party of all things we've missed out on. Our cake is a flop that never quite made it out of the pan, but we disguise it with pink frosting and call it dessert. In truth, it's an extravagant, well-earned and wasteful indulgence that we eat with two forks. It's not too late for anything. The years have passed, but the new memories have yet to be made. Age has arrived, but it has displaced the bitterness. Mom is too relieved that she had me at all to be bothered with hang-ups for having had me. We have years ahead of us and no time to lose. My cheeks are pink from the cold and hers from fluctuating hormones.

Like mother, like daughter, though chronologically different.

If you ask yourself why I forgave, I ask myself if there is a need to? Waiting for what's rightfully mine is what I knew getting older would give me back. I just needed Mom to catch up with me.