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The Smallest Things by April Greene January 24, 2007 It became a serious issue. It became a serious issue, and then it became a funny one. "It's a Bower trait," my mom would always say, referring to her father's side of the family, whenever my brother and I asked her about one of our clan's many physical curiosities. "You name it, we got it," she'd start. "Pimples, moles, warts, dandruff, oily skin, gawky arms, cowlicks, brittle fingernails, mounds of earwax, poor eyesight, small busts, and big feet." Her list encompassed every deathly cosmetic ailment I could think of; being bred from less desirable stock seemed scarcely imaginable. Surely the next logical step would be to hear that these Bowers I was related to were also reliable harbors for every major disease and organ deformity on the top ten. But we would find that wasn't the case. "I know how I'm going to die, you kids just watch," my mom said once when my brother and I were in upper elementary school and, after having endured another recitation of the list, thought to up the ante and ask about our family's graver hereditary pass-downs. "Here it goes: I'm going to have a stroke, in my home, in the late afternoon, on a cold day, when I'm in my early eighties. That's how all the Bowers go. That's how you'll go. That's all we get!" She threw her hands up almost joyously and my brother and I looked at each other. The ability our mother had just given us to clearly envision our own deaths as well as hers was at once unsettling and hilarious. She went on to refute the possibility that our other lineages might someday be to blame for our ends. 'the Greenes, they get dementia; the Swopes, it's the bad knees; the Dicksons, there's diabetes; but that Bower stroke? That's the one — that's the prevailing thing," she said almost proudly. She saw us thinking and added, "Hey, that's a pretty good way to go, right? You're just knocked out. Bam, just like that, and you're dead! No biggie." She smiled with wide eyes and waited. Slowly, we nodded our heads at her salesmanship. Okay, maybe being a Bower meant putting up with a wince-producing body for 80-something years, but at least we could expect a relatively painless exit. No, we supposed, it didn't seem so bad. Unfortunately, that warm feeling of mortal certainty vanished for me a few years later when I got to junior high and was suddenly handed my own full compliment of those smaller Bower flaws which had come to pale in view of the bigger picture. My dandruff and earwax were now in full bloom, my face resembled a Whack-a-Mole game with pimples for animals, and my training bra stuffing made itself known on more than one locker room occasion. Are you kidding? At thirteen, I would have jumped at the chance to trade it all in for some of that invisible Dickson diabetes. I spent many seventh grade afternoons scrutinizing my various body parts, attempting to understand and qualify every abnormality. One day I'd do my scaly elbows, the next my knotty belly button, whatever hadn't been thoroughly examined before. I brought each one to my mother's attention for interpretation, and flaw after flaw was explained away as yet another Bower trait. I began to think I should be damning my maternal line for every ill the world had ever suffered, but one afternoon, I decided to focus on my particularly small calves, which to this day look grossly underfed. "Those?" my mom asked, examining them in the kitchen with my jeans rolled up to the knee. "No, no," she said, looking askance of their puniness. "No, that's a Greene thing. Those are your father's. Haven't you ever seen pictures of his mother? The woman was like a washing machine on toothpicks!" It was a relief to find that not every undesirable quality I carried around was handed down from my mom; it made the family seem more balanced to know that my dad was also contributing to my unpopularity and subsequent good grades. My brother told me he found the same kind of happiness in discovering that his avocado-like nose could not be traced back to the Bowers, but to his own Dickson father. I remember him saying, "It's like, score one for Dad, you know?" Yes, I'd thought. It is. About the author: My mother was born and raised in Brooklyn and has always had trouble fitting into the conservative Colorado city she moved to 30 years ago, where I was raised, and where she still lives. I moved to New York after college and attribute my comfortability here largely to her -- one of the lesser-known good Bower traits, I guess. | | | |
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