Rose Colored Cigarettes

Rose Colored Cigarettes

My mother had the decency to attempt to cover up the thick smell of cigarette smoke.  This was not a behavior that is required to be a good mother but she wanted to protect the innocence instilled in the body of my elementary aged self.  Exposure to the reality outside of the bubble wrap she enclosed me in meant exposure to real risk and the cruelty of human nature.  Her attempts never succeeded, the smell lingered for hours on top of her oversized Coors Light tee shirt passed down to her from her father.  The same scent would carry through her breath into my nostrils when she leaned over to kiss my forehead sharply at 8 pm on a school night.  I played into her make believe fantasy that her children had no idea she smoked cigarettes, and that their perception of the ideal mother would carry on their shoulders and lift her up on a pedestal.  The latter was still true regardless of the cancerous sticks that would sit between her teeth when she thought no one was watching.  The flick of the lighter and the smoke that coated her lungs did not dim the light of my mother in my perception.

Everything about being a teenager made me long for a hug that engulfed me in the stench of that smoke.  Or a kiss on the forehead that made me question if my skin would be stained with that lingering cigarette breath.  As a child I wanted to lace her water bottle with listerine so I wouldn't be bothered with the cigarette mom's breath, but as a 14 year old with too many questions and a pit of loneliness, I was tempted to pick up a pack just to imitate the smell.  Maybe the cigarettes would have given me the comfort that my mother was supposed to give.

I missed her with such an ache that I pushed away anyone who would try to act in her place.  They didn't smell like her.  I continued with my mother and I’s after school routine for a while but refused to allow company in her place.  Her spot on the couch remained vacant during 3-4pm as General Hospital would play.  I sat and watched, every once in a while I would turn to my left to catch my moms reaction to the dramatic monologue being projected from our T.V screen, but only for a moment until reality would split my skull.  My once lively active teenage body became hollowed into a shell and I stopped feeling comfort in that daily after school routine.  My mind stopped playing tricks on me and I stopped looking to my left.  

The sliding glass door that revealed our backyard used to slide open and shut various times throughout the day.  My brother and I would chase each other through the house and into the grass arena outback for as long as the sun would shine.  I would hear the slow sliding of the door after dark while I lay cozy in my bed drifting to sleep when my mom would slip out to ditch her morals and spark a nicotine buzz before returning back to motherhood.  As a teenager, that door barely opened.  No kids to play outside, the see-saw got rusty.  No mother to sneakily smoke a cigarette, her lighter still sat under the railing, and I'm sure that rusted too.

My best friend's mom exhaled the same contagious lingering smoke that my mom did.  At fifteen I would spend the night squeezed into her twin sized bed with her as we would discover teenage-hood together.  Her mom would come in the room, same as mine did.  Kiss on the forehead to her daughters.  She would even spare one for me.  Her cigarette soaked breath smells different though.  It didn't trigger feelings of nostalgia, and it didn't satisfy the yearning for a mothers comfort. 

Sweet dreams half way through my nights occasionally doused me in rose colored smoke as I would find my alternate state existing in a plane that capsulated a childhood that never ended, a mother who never got sick, and a blindness to the reality of a bitter existence.

Grief from six feet above wrapped me in a state of blind hope.  I buried her soul, next to her cigarettes, but her face and body sat above ground looking me in the eye with an expression that suggested this was not the same woman whose pinky I grasped while taking my first steps.  It wasn't the same woman who would burden me with a cell phone camera in my face, capturing every outfit before school.  Not the same woman whose perfume only accentuated the smell of her bad habits.  This was not my mom.  Her physical being still breathing, her heart still beating, her eyes still light and loving.  My mother is still alive, my mom is dead.