Bruise

I asked my mom once whether she has ever had a hickey and she told me that she never has. I couldn't believe it. A hickey is a rite of passage into the underworld of the adult community, it holds major significance in a girl's dating life, and to never experience this is an oversight.

"Never?! Not ever? You are telling me that you have never had a hickey and you are fifty-something years old," I said.

"That's what I'm telling you," she said. She seemed altogether unconcerned about the fact. I understand that you don't want to get a plethora of hickeys, you don't want to be considered a floozy, but on the other hand she has been married for thirty years. That is plenty of time to receive one hickey.

"Have you ever felt a gaping hole in your life that is yet to be filled?" I asked.

Her eyebrows furrowed and she said perplexed, "Why would I want a hickey? All it is is a bruise. There is nothing romantic about a bruise."

Before I continue I must explain my mother. She is the most practical person alive. Her mind is fully logical. She has an a+b=c kind of mind. And so her comment was a very mommish thing to say, it was dead on with what I would have expected her to say and frankly anything else would have disappointed, yet when she said that it blew my mind. It was the most unexpected thing in the world.

"Mom, of course it is a bruise, but it is so much more than a bruise. That bruise represents the fact that a guy was so crazy about you that he essentially tried to eat your skin. How can you call that a mere bruise? That is a bruise created from passion, it is what we call a sexy bruise."

She looked at me as though I were crazy. This was a conversation sans understanding. Where she saw a bruise, I saw romance. There was no communicado on this point. It was just typical of her to take something romantic and strip it down till it was a fragmented, naked thing that was removed of all its glory.