Your Mom Your Dad

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As Dad’s golf game finishes, I am aware that I haven’t seen any of your girls as Mom, though. There is only a group of Dad’s friends who are of the same age and appearance as Dad, old with thin gray hair on their heads and bulging bellies under their shirts.

The next day, Mom demanded to be taken to a mall, not a nearby mall, but a big mall downtown. She has run out of her favorite beauty cream that our nearby mall doesn’t sell that specific brand of beauty product.

We split up when we arrive at the mall. Mom and I go to the beauty counters, and Dad goes anywhere but the beauty counters by himself. We will meet again in two hours at the front gate.

The beauty counters are shiny, as they always should be, and a perfume fragrance can be smelled lightly in the air. 

Various shapes and sizes of beautiful bottles and tubes are organized neatly inside a thick glass cabinet. With the help of spotlights, they appear sparkling like jewels.

Mom strokes a sample of anti-aging day cream and rubs it on her hand. Then she smells it and smiles. She does the same for a night cream and agrees to buy them.

The sales girl praises Mom for her delicate skin and also kindly reminds Mom about wrinkles around her eyes. With her professional skill, she persuades Mom to buy a tube of anti-wrinkle eye cream. 

It is in  a tube smaller than my little finger but twice the price of the other creams combined.

The sales girl tells Mom that if she buys another thing to raise the purchase value up to Rp 700.000, she will receive a free gift. This smart little beauty pouch contains lipstick, mascara, a small compact powder and a small perfume bottle.

Mom stares at me as if she is asking for approval. But I know that she doesn’t need any approval from me.