Mother’s Comforting Gray Gun :: Personal Narrative Profile

Mothers satisfying Gray Gun I lay on my side with iodine socked foot dangling off the edge of the bed, looking d stimulate at Mom on the floor. She lay on a pallet of itchy, greens army blankets my dad borrowed from his tour in Vietnam. No matter how many an(prenominal) measure they were washed, the blankets always smelled like smoke and machine oil I had never seen them used anywhere but the floor. It took a while for my eye to adjust to the dark, but when they finally focused, I could easily follow on the profile of my mothers distinctive nose. The Torres Nose, a nose passed down from her set ab let out and his father before him--a nose I am now glad I did not inherit. She lay perfectly still looking beautiful and peaceful, men at her sides as if asleep.I knew better, Mom never slept when Dad worked out of town, she was practicing. Eight arcminutes was the time to beat, and if anyone could beat it, it was my mother. Mom had a steely ending much like the .357 Magnum kept under her pillow. It took a full trine seconds to slide her right hand up under her head, two seconds to restrain her palm around the grip and place her finger on the trigger, another(prenominal) two seconds to roll up on one knee, and one second more to steady herself by jutting out her leg to the side, a move I am positive she stole after watching Farah Fawcett in Charlies Angels. She would run through the exercise many more times before morning came. My mothers late night drills continued until 1983. That year, our city conventional emergency 9-1-1 service, and Mom believed the police could now protect us from manque intruders. Still, she bragged her response time was a lot faster.The first Saturday morning of the month, if she hadnt stayed up practicing the night before, Mom and I would head over to a turquoise-and-pink cinderblock create that sold baked goods, tennis shoes, candles, cassette tapes, and meat. Spanish polkas played on the intercommunicate while an old woman with mismatched eyes sat in a folding chair near a box fan. I shuffled my feet along the floor making scraping noises with my shoes as I went. The linoleum was grainy with dirt that nearly hid the checkerboard pattern. As my mother placed her order, I used the black and white tiles to play my own version of hopscotch.