Exceptions to the Rule
By Jenna Brack
@jennabrackwriting
I grew up on a burnt-orange pew in the back-left corner of a Kansas church. When I was young, my family attended three times a week—every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening—and during each service, I nestled next to my mom, who always looked marvelous with her dark brown, gently-curled hair, vibrant lipstick, and crisp dress or jumper. After we sang a few hymns—my mom following the alto line, me trying to keep up with the verses—we sat down. Then, my mom kept me busy by having me circle alphabet letters in the church bulletin.
Find the A’s, she whispered, and I went to work, studying each letter closely, looking across every line, completing my assignment. When I finished those, she pointed to another letter, and I’d be back to the races, studiously circling M’s or T’s. Over my head, the pastor’s voice spoke big words from the pulpit. Although I wasn’t really paying attention to the sermon, the whole process felt a bit like receiving a literary and theological education at the same time.
Still, every so often, I did catch a few words being spoken inside the church. One phrase especially puzzled me: “bear false witness”—as in, Do not bear false witness, according to our King James translation.
“What does that mean?” I asked my mom.
She translated for me. “It means do not tell a lie,” she said.
The rule made good sense, and I understood it should be followed like the other commandments. But what I did not understand, then, was that there seemed to be a few exceptions to following this rule—exceptions that could only be invoked by mothers.
Exception #1: Age
When I was six years old, my mom celebrated a birthday. She told me it was her 29th birthday, which seemed fine and good to me. But that morning, my aunt and grandma—my mom’s sister and mother—came over to our house and placed a huge banner outside: “Happy 35th birthday, Patricia!” it read, draping from one end of our ranch house to the other.
Having learned to read by then, I saw the sign and became indignant. I ran inside the living room, where the three women were sitting.
“My mom is not 35! She is 29!” I yelled, defending my mother’s honor.
My grandma and aunt both laughed.
“Your mother has been lying to you,” my grandma responded.
I looked over at my mom—the most credible human I knew. Her eyes sparkled with a secret, even as her pink lips stayed pressed together. I still don’t know if she ever admitted the truth to me out loud.
But my aunt broke it to me, gently but directly. “She is 35.”
I blushed, with the force of someone who had just been completely fooled. My own mom, the one who had taught me not to bear false witness, had lied to me.
Exception #2: Hair Color
When I was 19, during the spring of my freshman year in college, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. On Mother’s Day that year, just three or four weeks after she had started chemotherapy, I decided to drive home and surprise her. I left my college dorm room early on a Sunday morning and drove two hours home, arriving just in time for church—where I was certain I would find her, sitting in a burnt-orange pew in the back-left corner.
But when I arrived in the lobby, only my dad greeted me. “Your mom’s not here,” he said. “She’s not feeling well.”
He didn’t say much more; he seemed quiet and a bit tense. I didn’t ask any more questions, simply sat through the service next to my dad, wondering exactly what was happening at home with my mom.
Afterwards, I went home and entered the living room—the same one where I had once discovered her real age—and found her in the recliner, with my aunt sitting next to her.
I read my mom’s expression, which I expected to be full of delight over my visit. Instead, she began crying.
“My hair’s falling out,” she said.
There were no celebrations that day, nor any teasing or jokes. There was simply the cold, hard truth: my mom was sick, and her beautiful, dark hair—which she had always taken such care of—was falling out in sheets across her shoulders and back. She, and our whole family, were at the beginning of a very difficult road.
Thankfully, the chemo and subsequent surgery eventually worked; over the next year, the tumor shrank and went away. Slowly, my mom’s hair grew back.
But when it returned, it had a sort of mottled, striped appearance to it, kind of like a skunk. We were all surprised, having never seen her without her characteristic brown hair.
That certainly didn’t last long. As soon as it was long enough to cover her scalp, my mom immediately went to her hairdresser and returned with very short hair in her typical rich, dark brown. The only time she didn’t wear it this way was on Fridays, when she dyed it blue and yellow to cheer for my high school brother’s football team.
“It’s just hair,” she said. “I’m having fun with it, now.”
But when I later asked her at what point she was going to let her hair go gray, it was no laughing matter.
“Jenna,” she responded, very seriously. “No one needs to know my real hair color except me and my hairdresser. I plan to die with color on my hair.”
This time, I did not protest; I was old enough to understand. After going bald, wearing headscarves and wigs, and suffering through a season in which she didn’t know what life would bring her—or whether life would be extended to her at all—my mom had permission to lie about her hair color all she wanted.
Exception #3: Established family “facts”
I am the mom now, with a six-year-old daughter in the house who is learning to read and write. One afternoon, she asks to use my computer so she can write something. I hesitate for a minute (I don’t always want sticky fingers on my work space), but I agree and open a word document for her. Sitting at the kitchen counter, her legs dangling from the metal barstool, she begins slowly typing out the names of everyone in our family, then placing their respective ages out to the side.
Next to the word “Mom,” she writes my age. My real age. The number is greater than 35; I have never had the heart to bluff about my age to my kids, having never forgotten the moment I discovered my own mom had lied about hers.
But my mom—who my daughter calls Nana—is still holding out, even after all these years.
“How old is Nana?” my daughter asks.
By now, I am folding laundry in another room, which affords me a few seconds to consider my answer. My mom is still one of the most devout women I know. She is also religiously committed to being 29 and holding for the rest of her life. My older son figured out her real age a few years ago, but my daughter isn’t quite there … yet.
I think about saying the real number, but it would require me to do the math, which I try to avoid whenever possible. And when I consider it, my mom’s age-and-hair color philosophy seems to have worked for her. She is a survivor whose suffering has only made her increasingly joyful, a woman still committed to occasional jokes who enjoys her life. She plays baseball with her grandkids, even when she ends up with a few bruises. She still loves a good April Fool’s prank, and is known by my children as a “fun grandma.” People comment all the time how young she looks (and I wince a little, because my genes seem to have come from the other side of the family). Frankly, my mom seems to have discovered the fountain of youth, without Botox or surgeries or anything more than a box of hair color.
Plus, there’s something inside of me—some ingrained moral code as deeply rooted as my sense that you should never tell a lie—that says you should never, ever tell your mother’s real age. Not even to your own daughter.
“29,” I respond.
There is a brief pause from the other room.
“But how are YOU older than Nana?” my daughter asks.
She’s clearly onto us; I know she’ll figure it out soon. But I just can’t be the one to break it to her.
“I don’t know,” I say, wondering if I’ve inherited my mom’s signature facial expression when keeping a harmless secret. Perhaps it’s a good thing my daughter cannot see my face right now. My lips form a half smile as I find myself saying,“It’s a mystery, isn’t it?”
Guest essay written by Jenna Brack. Jenna is a writer and teacher living in Kansas City. She has an M.A. in English and enjoys good coffee, serious conversation, and not-too-serious fiction.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.