Page 13 - ISI_171_AprilMay

APRIL / MAY 2021 • IDAHO SENIOR INDEPENDENT SPOTLIGHTS PAGE 13

More Than Skin Deep

REMEMBERING MOM THIS MOTHER’S DAY

I remember how she infused my life with
BY BILL LEVINE knowledge about and appreciation for her
Southern upbringing in then small-town
(SENIOR WIRE) Surprisingly, it’s taken my Atlanta. Her legacy, for me, though, is of a
third snowbird winter in Florida to realize motherly kindness and unconditional love,
that, at age 68, I still have freckled arms and even in the face of lost outerwear.
shoulders. I’ve looked closely, and they’re These soothing memories of my mom
not liver spots. The freckles have blossomed give her a metaphysical immortality in my
because of a better commitment to catching reckoning with her death. But her shared
sun rather than TV binging this season. freckled-ness is a deeper physical manifes-
My first thoughts about these sun spots tation of her immortality. I am delighted to
is how I shared them with my mother. In carry forward Mom’s rare MCR1 gene variant
the “tan don’t burn days” of my child- that produces less robust melanin-causing
hood, Mom would always remind that I had freckled spots on skin, instead of an even
light, red-haired type skin like hers, which suntan and more UV ray protection. Less
required a slathering of suntan lotion before technically, I am a happy to have her freck-
going poolside or seaside. les, even if UV rays can really zap me.
It didn’t always work as my ointment of When my mother was around my age,
youthful summers was Solarcaine. her red-headed, light-skinned, freckled,
I sensed back then that freckles were an sunbaked Southern past caught up with her,
oddity in my Jewish neighborhood, as was as her lifetime vulnerable exposure to UV rays
my mom’s red hair. My hair, though, was © lex.senja, Bigstock.com produced a cancerous skin growth. Luckily,
standard issue, medium brown. it was removed without any further spread.
My freckles were really a neutral Atlanta in which Confederate heroes were Knowing this, however, has not kept
physical feature. No one ever mixed carved into immortality. me diligent about sun protection down
me up with Alfred E. Neuman, the Mad Despite ignominiously hyping Stone here in Florida. I need then to heed my
Magazine cover gargoyle. Mountain, Mom embraced the New South in mother’s slightly Southern drawl, child-
But from my dad, I inherited duck feet, the late 1960s as she hyped up her support of hood warning “We burn easily, Bill, put
which was a made-for-childhood-derision integrationist Southern journalists. that lotion on good.” ISI
condition in which my feet where sig- My mother passed away 13 years ago,
nificantly out-turned. Thus, unfortunate though there are memories of her that live on.
nicknames of “crazy leg,” “duck,” and Experts say that
“penguin” stuck to me like Gorilla Glue. when an Alzheimer’s-
Assigning intangibles from parents is wracked parent dies,
more a subjective exercise, but I am con- their children imme- Moving Soon?
fident that by genetics or osmosis I have diately remember
gotten my love of most sports, sense of their parents in We’re your full-service moving
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It was my mother’s red-headed, freckled pressive, claw-like, Maximize
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