This is my entry to the Sunday #freewrite 5-minute exercise hosted by @mariannewest. See details here.

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My Grandma Smelled like Baby Powder

Before people were concerned about baby powder causing cancer, my grandma Felipa held the record of more baby powder used in a life time. She did not die of cancer, which should be enough evidence to overturn any punitive damage verdict against J&J.

Instead, she died of a stroke when she was more than 80 years old. Ironically, she died in my mother’s arms, the one daughter-in-law she hated (for no particular reason, except probably that my mom married her favorite son). My father never understood my grandmother’s animosity against my mother. Despite her antipathy, my mom always made sure my father, who was a gambler, put aside some spending money for his mother before he left on his customary gambling parrandas.

Additionally, my mother had no problem to make any necessary arrangements to fulfill grandma Felipa’s eccentricities. And here’s where the baby powder comes in.

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My blurry and scant memories of Grandma Felipa place her in her late 70s, visiting us occasionally, spending a few days, sharing my bed, and scaring the hell out of me because of her going-to-bed rituals. She was obsessed with hygiene and cleanliness, which was not a problem in and of itself since we were, as mother liked to say, “poor but decent” (and by that she meant that everything in her household, no matter how cheap or used, had to be immaculate). However, in those days we had to walk to a nearby river to fetch water and laundry was done in the river. I remember hitting blue jeans against the rocks to scare the dirt out of them. Thus, we tried to keep things like linens as clean as possible so that we did not have to change them every day, which would imply overloading whoever had to do the laundry that week.

Well, grandma Felipa demanded clean sheets and pillow cases every night. She also demanded a hot bath, which sometimes required that either of us had to go to the river, sometimes late at night, to get her water for her bath. Even though she had new clothes at her place, every time she visited, she brought only one change of clothes, usually old and tattered, so that my mother would ask my father for extra money to take her shopping. She also carried a special blanket she placed over the clean sheets my mother provided every night and she spread baby powder on it. She had her own, the fancy ones with a round puff fluffy applicator, which my mother was always sure my father would get for her every time he was traveling around, but she used to take mine instead, so that hers would last longer.

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So, she took her bath every night, put on her new nightgown, put on makeup (the whole shebang), made her hair, only to later put on some sort of nightcap, put her blanket on top of the sheets, powdered my bed, pulled out her dentures, put them in a glass of water next to the bed, and expected me to placidly fall asleep. It was always a scary experience. The funny thing is that every time grandma Felipa came over she brought presents for my younger brother, who always managed to avoid her company at night and slept with my parents, but she always forgot to get me anything. Years later I learned she was a bit racist. My brother was white and had blond hair and honey eyes, like my father. I got my mother’s Indian features (probably another reason she did not like her either). But it was ok. Except for the scary ritual, I never held a grudge; after all she always smelled good; wrinkled like a raisin, but fresh like a baby.

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