“Y
ou look like you’re one of the sisters!”
declared the supermarket cashier to my
mother as he rang up a bottle of orange
juice from our very large order. My older sister Julie
and I were helping to put items from the cart onto the
conveyor belt..
My 15-year-old self looked up from my task. Was this
guy crazy? He looked normal enough, with his graying,
close-cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Maybe he
didn’t see too well? But that couldn’t be, because he
was able to read the prices as he entered them into the
register.
I waited for my 40-something mother to protest,
to suggest that he needed new glasses. But she did
something uncharacteristic. She giggled. Then she voiced
the mildest objection, as if begging for more, like the
performer who seeks to quell his audience’s applause
while continuing to take bows. “You don’t really mean
it,” she said.
“Honest to goodness, I thought that you were a girl.
Gave me a start when I realized who-was-who and whatwas-what.” He was a salt-of-the-earth type, probably
a resident from the retirement community in the small
New Hampshire town where we had our summer home.
When we got into the parking lot, my mother asked
my sister and me, repeatedly, if we had heard what the
cashier said. Sure we had, but I couldn’t help but think
that my usually sensible mother was acting very silly.
And things got even worse when we got back down
to the lake. The second we walked through the screen
door, my mother found my father to tell him the story.
She even asked us for corroboration. Then, instead of
chuckling at my mother’s folly, my dad did something
uncharacteristic: he expressed approval, even agreement
with the cashier’s pronouncement.
What the heck was going on? Had the adults all gone
mad? When did a grown woman, who’d procreated ageappropriately, look like she was her own daughter? Who
was fooling whom … and why?
My mother had never been one of the “cool” mothers.
Although she was always willing to lend us her
sweaters—mostly muted-colored cardigans—she never