LiPsTick

I started packing today. In my list of “things to pack” was my lip-balm! Glossy red and strawberry flavored!


I remembered a moment as I clutched the tiny round container in my hand before I could throw it in with the rest of the toiletries! I remembered a sepia toned snapshot.
…of tall trees, a winding road, a breathtaking sunset and snow-capped peaks looking candy flossed in the setting sun’s light or lack of it. The pinkness asserting itself amidst the sepia of the rest of the snapshot!


The sepia tone comes from the twilight of that evening…when a sumo with a family of four lumbered along a long winding road climbing higher and higher. My parents, well into 15 years of marriage, resolutely patient enough to take two young children, one grumpy (me) the other quiet (he), on a vacation!


It got colder and colder and mom helped us into our sweaters and scarves! Warm and toasty we were, but, feeling sicker with each curve and more and more tired!
Until mom did the coolest thing ever! She turned my head to face her, held my face by the chin with one hand and with the other she applied lipstick to my lips. HER lipstick! Glossy and sweet tasting! That thing I was not supposed to wear because I was not old enough. That thing I never dared to touch. She saw the utterly confused look on my face!


“Chapped lips are not good! The cream got left in the big bag. This is all I have at the moment to keep your lips soft”.

I willingly complied.


Having realized the novelty in it for me, she smiled and said, “Sometimes, small girls wear lipstick!”

The lipstick softened the rough journey ahead for a grumpy child!

The lip balm is safely in my bag!

Ladakh Looms.

Right now… this snapshot does!