His Perfect Imperfections / boyxboy

His Perfect Imperfections / Chapter 3

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! I never really understood why that was a saying, but I always think that exact thing whenever I see lemons at the grocery story, or just about anywhere I happen to get a glimpse of them. It was a saying that I'd been pondering since elementary school. Kind of like that saying "things get better," and basically came to the conclusion that both sayings were just lies. Although, making lemonade sounded really good on artificially hot day.

"Alex! Are you ready?" My mother shouted up the stairs. She'd been trying for the past few hours to get her earrings in, but I had a feeling the hole had already closed up.

My mother wasn't exactly one of those 'girly girls' you see on TV with the handbags holding dogs, or the pink skirts, or the attitude that anything could damage your nails. She was actually someone who was willing to play in the mud. Someone willing to get dirty and do things even my father refused to do. She was a tough woman in that sense, but my grandmother hated her horribly. Although my mom was clearly straight, from what I'm told anyway, her family used to think that she was a lesbian. They would often accuse her, I guess, of sleeping with girls and having a very masculine persona.

As she grew older that manly side to her sort of diminished, I think it was because of all the bad name calling, and eventually she became more womanly. She was still the only one in the house willing to kill a few spiders with her bare hands, and that's saying something since the rest of us are men. Though some men we are when the woman of the house is basically the king. I don't even think my father is as manly as my mother. Well, other than having facial hair and shorter hair and quite a bit of hair on his chest.

So anyway, what my point is, my mother never wore earrings and only got them because my grandma basically forced her to. And by grandma I mean my father's mom. My mom's mom was dead. She had been for a while. Her father was in jail and from what I can gather it's because he killed her mom. It's a tragic story, one that I don't intend on getting clarification on.

As I hopped down the stairs I noticed that she was wearing a dress. I don't think in all the fourteen years of my existance I've ever seen her wear a dress. Though I guess today happened to be a special occasion, one that would, I'm sure, make my day even worse. My great uncle Henry died in his sleep and we were attending the funeral. My father was very close to great uncle Henry. He basically raised my dad since he didn't have a father. But I knew that my grandmother would be there. Henry was, after all, her older brother. And I immediately knew why my mother put on a black dress instead of going with some pants and a white shirt. She didn't want to start anything with my hateful grandmother.

I noticed that she still had the tag hanging out from the dress. "Mom, you didn't remove the tag."

"What?" She stared at me, wincing as she tried to squeeze her earnings into her ears that were clearly no longer capable of such abuse. "Crap, where?"

"There."

"Can you get it for me, sweety?"

I reached over to her shoulder blade where the tag was and pulled it out, snagging the dress a little. "Opps."

She stared at it. "That's fine. I won't be using this dress afterwards anyway." She smiled. "If only I had a daughter... I could give this to her."

"Mom!" My older brother, Dennis, marched through the kitchen door. "Dad needs the keys to move the truck."

"They're on the hook where they've always been." She smirked, still trying to get her eating in. "Check the Honda and tell how much gas we have. We need to make it to Hollinburg and back so that's about..." She counted quickly. "Six or seven hours, give or take, to get there and back."