Lessons From My Mother

Today when I took that test, I wore my mother's pearls with my typical black-turtleneck -and-black-jeans. And I thought, if there's any luck to be had, I'll get it with these.

Not that my mother was inherently lucky. She would have said the opposite. But she was smart; she had such hard-earned wisdom.

My mother taught me so many things. Mostly when I wasn't looking and couldn't head it off.

Most of what she taught me was after the fact. Like there's power and then there's power ... females can access and use everything they're given to get what they want ... and that the best kind of power is sex and brains in tandem.

She learned that the hard way, I think. My mother was the kind of beauty that men lusted after. An Ava Gardner beauty in a repressed time. She worked it, though -- filtered through her own weirdly Puritan ethic. To my mind, she did a lot of self-justification ... but at this point in my life, I'm less inclined to criticize her for that.

I'm not that kind of beauty ... but I'm getting more and more comfortable with my particular brand of attractiveness. Does that sound self-aggrandizing? I mean, it's taken me a half-century *gasp* to earn that kind of acceptance-of-self ... so forgive me if it does.

Like today, I felt good about my face, and my body, and the way people respond to me. And a twenty-three year old told me how good I looked (mwah, Leslie!) ...

And I thought, "Mother, are you there? They're working. Thank you."

What better luck than to like how you look at 54? (And I think I did ok on the test, too.)