Look Alike

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood

Photographs and albums were stored in the bottom drawer of Mom's file cabinet. Sometimes, when she felt particularly nostalgic after a martini, she'd invite me to sit beside her on the couch, and we'd browse through her life captured in black and white. Although Mom was an only child, I couldn't help but notice that she had more cousins than she could count, especially when everyone got together for the holidays. I had yet to meet one of them.

“Look at me,” Mom said, pointing at her four-year-old self. “I look just like Shirley Temple.”

As Mom turned the page, I couldn't help but see Shirley Temple in every photograph.

“When I was a little girl, mothers were obsessed with Shirley Temple. There was a strange competition among them, all trying to dress their daughters to look like her. I suppose your grandma was lucky because I was a natural without her having to put in much effort."

"Grandma was an excellent seamstress, still is, and sewed all my dresses and even tatted the collars. She'd study pictures of Shirley Temple and style my hair in ringlets, complete with a bow. I was her Shirley Temple doll, and she was proud of that."

"Did you mind?" I asked. 

"Maybe a little," Mom replied. "Every girl in the neighborhood looked the same. It was a little creepy." 

Mom rarely talked about her parents, but when she did, she always mentioned Grandma's fascination with Shirley Temple or Grandpa's strict rule against letting her get a driver's license simply because she was a woman. Mom described her parents as old-fashioned and set in their ways, whereas Mom thought of herself as a modern woman.

"In those days,” she said, “women married young and had children right away. They became housewives responsible for cooking, cleaning, and managing their household while their husbands brought home the bacon. That would have driven me absolutely crazy," she laughed. "There were too many expectations on women back then, and I never imagined my life unfolding that way."

Mom closed the album and opened another. She traced her finger over a deckled photo of a smiling teenage brunette sprawled on a manicured lawn. "There's Julie," she said. "She was my best friend from kindergarten to college, and we're still close. You know her as Mrs. Olson." Mom's face relaxed. "Sometimes I wish we lived closer to friends and family."

As she turned the pages, Mom outgrew her Shirley Temple stage. I watched her transform into a tall, slender, independent woman with high cheekbones and Hollywood looks. She studied design at UC Berkeley, and when she graduated, she got a fancy job as a buyer for Capwells department store and traveled the country in an airplane. 

And then she married Dad.

"The first thing your father said when we met on our blind date was, 'Wow! You're tall," she laughed. "Your Dad said he was thrilled to meet a good-looking woman who matched his height." 

Dad was well over six feet tall. 

Mom opened her wedding album next. "After your Dad returned from the Korean War, we married three months later." She pointed to her long, elegant wedding dress and smiled proudly. "I made that dress myself, and it was magnificent. Everyone who saw it said so. I wish I’d saved it for you.” 

Mom was the epitome of Hollywood glamour, standing next to Dad in his white tuxedo jacket like a perfect wedding cake topper.

"Those were wonderful times," she sighed. 

Mom opened another album and stared at a picture of herself among the Garden Grove Elementary School staff. I noticed that everyone was smiling except for her. Triggered by past trauma, she began to replay her brief and bitter career as a teacher as if it had happened just yesterday. 

"I was a damn good teacher," she said. "My fourth graders were the best, but let me tell you, that male-dominated administration and lack of teacher support made my life a living hell. They didn't care about the kids or education; they only cared about the politics, and I wasn't interested in playing that game. Then there was that one time when they..." 

“Mom, remember the peanut butter cookies you always brought home from school for Brother and me? They were the size of dinner plates!" 

Mom returned to the present and cracked a smile. "Yes, I do remember. Those cafeteria ladies sure knew how to bake." 

Mom got up and scooted Poom away from the sliding door with her foot. "I need a cigarette," she said and stepped outside to smoke on the patio.

I returned the photo albums and peeked into the drawer above where Mom kept her college art portfolios. Sometimes, she'd let me look at them if I washed my hands first. I always wondered why Mom couldn't draw, and she explained that design differed from fine art. Her portfolio contained textile designs, color studies, and architectural sketches. She often reminisced about the day Richard Diebenkorn visited her classroom. He was her favorite artist.

The day I told Mom I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, she was happy about that. My teacher thought it was an excellent idea, too. Mom bought me 500 sheets of newsprint for my birthday, a pad of drawing paper, drawing pencils, felt pens, oil pastels, and a gouache paint set. She said I had a natural talent and allowed me to create my art at the kitchen booth because Formica was easy to clean. However, she'd get mad whenever I became frustrated with my mistakes or when the first line I drew on a page didn't feel right, which made me want a new piece of paper.

"Either flip the page over or learn to use a damn eraser," she'd say. "I'm not buying more paper for you to burn through it in a week!"

One day, Mom joined me at the kitchen booth and showed me how to draw a tree. "Draw a tree like it grows," she said. "Start from the ground, go up the trunk, extend to the branches, and then to the leaves." She added, "You don't have to draw every leaf. The brain fills them in for the viewer."

I never forgot her demonstration.

In addition to her massive collection of recipes in the second drawer of the file cabinet, Mom kept folders of home and garden design ideas, all neatly categorized and labeled with her Dymo machine. If she saw a unique front door she liked or a simple patio cover design in a Sunset magazine, she'd tear it out and file it away. Mom saved paint swatches, snippets of fabric, and articles about the latest interior design trends. "I absolutely love Scandinavian design," she often said. "I appreciate its simplicity, clean lines, and the way it incorporates windows without coverings to let in natural light." For Mom, every inch of our single-wide trailer was hers to design.

In the top drawer of the filing cabinet, Mom kept folders for important things like bills and taxes. Toward the back of the drawer were Brother's and my adoption papers, vaccination books, school records, report cards, and baby books. I wasn’t allowed in that drawer.

I peeked through the sliding glass door and saw Mom sitting on the patio steps, staring at the cracks in the concrete. I wondered at that moment if she ever wished her life had turned out different. Did she miss her fancy job at Capwells and the travel that went with it? Did she regret leaving her teaching career on a sour note? I never dared to ask. But even though her life didn’t unfolded as she envisioned, she was an excellent housewife. Her remarkable talent for transforming our modest single-wide trailer into a beautifully designed, organized, and comfortable home was her superpower. 

Mom extinguished her cigarette in her favorite abalone shell. As she stretched, her knees cracked like walnuts. She stood up, took a deep breath, and came back inside with a smile to start cooking dinner.