Every Friday night as a child my brother and I would stay over at my grandparents’ house, and every Friday night, five minutes before my grandfather would come home after work and walk through the front door at 5:15 to take us out for dinner, I’d stand with my grandmother, my chin barely above the ledge of the long deep mahogany vanity, and watch her get ready. I’d study how she’d carefully apply her lipstick, blot her lips, and powder her nose. How she’d spritz one pump of Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew perfume on the nape of her neck, reach for my hand and give it a squeeze while winking at me in the mirror. To me, she was the pinnacle of elegance, grace, and everything I’d long to be.
I can recall sneaking into the bedroom before her to go through the top right drawer, unwrap a stick of pink Trident bubblegum from the pack always ‘hiding’ in there and examine each tube one-by-one, mentally cataloging them while blowing bubbles. Magentas, pinks, beiges, burgundies, and dusty rose after dusty rose, I’d line them up on the seam of the cream crocheted vanity runner, the scents of roses, honeydew, musty Kleenex, and bubblemint swirling from the drawer into what would become the definitive scent of my childhood. I loved that room.
Every holiday and birthday, or sometimes ‘just because,’ I’d be gifted her “free with purchase” mini makeup pouch, filled with whatever goodies the woman at the beauty counter had given her. I still have them all, and if I looked hard enough, I bet there are a few tubes of dusty rose hiding in my old bathroom drawer at my parents’ house.
In a way, my lipstick has always echoed my life: from days when friendships were formed over obscure flavours of Lipsmackers, to first kisses shared while wearing a marshmallow-scented sticky gloss. I can remember saving my babysitting money for my first “real” lipstick—the signature matte M.A.C. black box tossed in the bin, beaming as I tried it on for a classmate’s bat mitzvah. How many memories are bound, eternally tied by these tints? Frou, Marilyn, Velvet Teddy, Ruby Woo, Night Moth, Dare You. And how do I mark the days in between when I wore nothing at all, days where I spoke few words, felt everything, saw no one? Did balm cover the cracks in my lips the way I prayed it would varnish the façade I forced myself to placate?
Even now, 20 years later, my grandmother’s bedroom still smells of roses and honeydew. And though the tubes may be fewer, the colours less vibrant--and seemingly less used--I still rummage through her top right drawer for a touch-up or quick glide of colour whenever I stop in for a visit. Because one day there won’t be gum hiding for me and the dust will settle in that drawer, with untouched tubes never to be unsealed. But until then, I will still blot my lips with whatever wrinkled and pilling tissue she’s been using and left there and give myself a wink.
Emily Smibert is a Canadian writer and editor based in New York City.