Dear Laney,
You had chocolate on your shirt, and jelly in your hair, but what you thought you really needed last night at bedtime was to - as certain older women would say - "put on your face."
You got into my make-up, and very studiously applied lipliner, eyeshadow and blush. Like monkeys who are born knowing how to peel bananas, this motor skill must be printed on your straight-from-Dixie DNA because I know you haven't watched me do it. I live way out in the damn boonies and work from home, so I rarely wear make-up. This is a concern to my mother, who gave me birthday money last year specifically earmarked for cosmetics.
On the topic of southern women and their make-up, this is a story I overheard at a get-together in Vienna, GA last year. I think I'm repeating it correctly, but if I'm not, I'm sure Clay Mercer, who was also present, will leave corrections in the comments. Let it be said, however, that accuracy is not the hallmark of southern storytelling:
Apparently, Diane Couch, an outspoken southern matriarch and consummate hostess, noticed that there was a woman in town who rarely wore make-up, and was passing along that (horrifying) habit to her daughter. So Diane decided to address the situation by taking the daughter to the make-up counter at Belk department store herself, in order to get her outfitted with the latest cosmetics. A while later, the girl's mother runs into Diane and says, "I was going to go to the grocery store, but before we could leave, my daughter said she needed to run put her face on. I'll be damned if I'm going to wait to go to the Piggly Wiggly while my four-year old puts on blush."
I laughed so hard I almost cried.
When you had finished sampling everything in my make-up collection, putting eyeshadow on your lips and lipliner on your forehead, you looked at me and said, "I so bootiful." On that point, you are 220% correct. But most beautiful is the sight of you with chocolate on your shirt, jelly in your hair and peanut butter on your face.
Love,
Mom
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