I was applying my face cream in the bathroom of my parents’ home. Mother walked by, then turned and came back. She stood looking at me with one of those ‘Mother caught you’ looks.

"What did I do now?" I inquired. I was only 45 years old after all, and whatever I did I should have known better etc. Such was the conversation I expected. That wasn’t it at all!

"What is that dreadful smell?" Mother asked.

"There’s no smell here. I’m just putting my moisturizer on." I answered.

She inquired as to what kind of ‘cream’ I was using. I told her it was the stuff in the blue jar that she had used on all of us for sunburns, face cream and taught us how to apply correctly! I had used it all my life, and she had introduced me to it at a very young age.

"Oh, that stuff! I despise the smell of THAT STUFF!" she informed me and turned to walk away. I followed her.

"Mom you used that on us all our lives? " I stammered.

"Yes, I used it on all of you. I never ever said I liked it, and I don’t! It smells terrible!" She kept staring at me which really made me feel like a four-year-old. I was surprised but I persisted and tried to make sense of this ‘cold cream’ conversation.

I hid the jar of cream before she destroyed it!

I’ll never understand it! I mentioned it to my father and he seemed to think it had something to do with the fact that, at a very young age, I had eaten a goodly portion of a jar of this cream. After that when Mother used it she thought of the unending laundry that little prank of mine had caused her and she eventually banned it from the house. I didn’t know it had that effect on her. I thought she was more upset the day when I was five years old and took the family record for eating a dozen oranges in one sitting. Now that must have been a laundry nightmare!

But oranges weren’t banned!

Lately I have had that incredible urge to dip a spoon into my same blue cold cream jar, and have a taste of it! It just might be good with oranges?!

Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe