Cherry Blossom Candy Leaf

The other day I came home from work. Right away, Grandma needed my assistance. She had purchased some make-up and was asking me if it was too dark. I unscrewed the cap to look at the powder inside. "Well, what do you think?" she asked.

"It's fine, if you intend to go in black face," I replied.

This very old white woman, who denies that she is blind, bought make up that would be perfect for any woman with a chocolate brown complexion.

Grandma quickly advised me to grab the talcum powder and honestly, although I've heard of the stuff, I had no idea what she was talking about. She could have been speaking Yiddish, which she does on occasion. When she grabbed the bottle, I quickly realized that talcum = baby powder. She asked me to help her lighten up the powder. She chose the job of stirring it in with the end of her tooth brush as I added the white powder to the black powder.

After she was done stirring an entire bottle of baby powder into her make up, you would have thought the Cover Girl manufacturing plant exploded in the bathroom. I told her that she was getting it all over the place. Her pants were coated, as was one shoe, the bathroom rug, and the countertop and sink. She asked me how it was getting all over the place and I took this time to remind her that she was blind.

She looked at me with complete shock in her baby blues. "I'm NOT blind, I'm visually impaired." As she spoke, she powdered one spot on her face with the still too dark powder. "How does that look?"

"It's still a little dark, but maybe if you blend that spot into your whole face it won't look so bad."

She did so and walked out leaving me in powder hell. I began to frantically clean the bathroom knowing that Ben would be home any minute. He has called me every other day at work informing me that he has to move out due to the constant mess. He came home just as I was finishing up. He asked me to tell him what had happened, so I pulled him into the bathroom to explain. We laughed for a few minutes, which is quite easy when you don't see the mess. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. In less than three minutes of making make-up with Grandma, I was brought back to the Hiroshima photographs from World War II.