 I’ve had a lifelong love-hate relationship with a certain, seemingly innocuous word.
"Cute" is today’s universal term for aesthetic admiration, and I think it’s gotten totally out of hand. My shoes are cute. My haircut is cute. My bungalow in the Highlands is cute. I just bought a cute set of dinnerware. But me, ME — a grown-ass woman — I am NOT “a cutie pie,” “cute as a button” or “cute as a bug.” It’s the damndest thing … I say that word in daily conversation to describe everything from clothes to décor to my dogs. I make it a point to tell my girlfriends how cute they look whenever I see them. But when certain people use it against me, I mentally throw elbows and scratch eyeballs.
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 As I peered into my extra-strength magnifying makeup mirror this morning, I saw … my mother 25 years ago. Not just in the creases around my eyes, but the clothes, the attitude — all of it. I was beguiled and horrified at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, my female parental unit is a classy, smart, sweet and loving woman. I would be lucky to inherit her grace, wisdom and patience. But every girl experiences a certain amount of shock and dismay when she realizes she has turned out exactly like her mother. It dawned on me during my sunrise epiphany that the reason my little momma (she’s 4’10”) frequently drives me bonkers is precisely because we are way too much alike. At 43, I hear myself doing and saying the very things she did and said at my age. Back then, I rolled my eyes or openly chastised her eccentricities. Today, they are my jam, man.  When I had trouble sending a PDF attachment via email to my insurance agent a couple weeks ago, she suggested I fax it to her.
“What the what?” I said. “Who does that anymore? And what dinosaur operation actually has a fax machine on which to fax, heretofore?” As it turns out, ahem, I do. When my rep suggested I fax her, my initial response was that I would have to go in search of a location to do so. Like Staples or the FedEx store. But as I glanced across my desk at my new-fangled printer display screen, I noticed for the first time in the nine months since I bought the damn thing that it has a gleaming “fax” icon, right next to “print” “scan” and “copy.” Color me embarrassed. All I had to do was plug my phone line in the back of it and, BAM. Fax me up, Scotty.  I am single and living alone.
I have friends who apologetically wince when they utter that statement, like it’s a source of shame. I own it, though. In fact, I practically squeal with joy when I share it, and pity the fool in earshot. Why? Because at 42 years old, this is the first time in my entire life that I’ve been completely, no-safety-net, bereft-of-responsibility-save-numero-uno, inde-fucking-pendent. It is damn liberating. See, I went from my parents’ house to the college dorm, then back to the parental units’ basement when I dropped out. At age 21, I met the man who would become my husband. We got an apartment together with two other roommates. When baby made three, the hubs and I moved to our own place.  The notion of not being enough is a menacing shadow that has cast a pall over most of my life.
When I was growing up, it went something like this: I am not smart enough. I am not pretty enough. I am not tall enough. I am not popular enough. My boobs are not big enough. My waist is not small enough. My hair is not shiny enough. No one will ever really love me because I am just not enough. In my early adult life, when I became a single mom, I was still plagued by many of the denunciations above, but add to that: I am not giving my son enough love, attention, discipline, material things, etc. And above all, I am not a good enough mom. Later, when a thundering moment of clarity demonstrated that I could no longer drink like a normal person, and my world summarily crashed around my ears, my inner voice screamed, “You are not strong enough!” All of this, as it turned out, was bullshit.  What do Prince, Leonard Nimoy and long-overdue library fees have in common?
Well, nothing to most people. To me, though, they all represent threads in the fabric of my adolescence. Let me explain. I had the privilege of seeing His Purple Highness at the Louisville Palace Saturday. As you have no doubt seen, heard and read all over social media, he put on one HELL of a show. I haven’t been that energized or excited by a concert since, well… ever. I actually had butterflies in my stomach and tears in my eyes the entire time the funkiest man in music was on stage. His band was phenomenal, and his voice sounds exactly the same (if not better) than it did 30 years ago. Dude can GET DOWN. |
About Amy HiggsA former newspaper columnist, Amy takes her random, slice-of-life stories to the web. After 12 years, she's still just saying. Archives
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