Cheeks

All my life I loved my grandmother's sisters, my great aunts, with their adorable chipmunk faces. I know that sounds like a weird statement, but it's true.

My grandmother was the youngest of eight children, all two years apart. She was born in 1900, exactly fifty years before me. Grandma prided herself on being thoroughly modern and thoroughly beautiful all her life. She swore she never dyed her hair and her figure spoke for itself. The rumor is that she never broke a hundred pounds except when she was pregnant.

Her sisters were something else.

The oldest, Luella, was married at sixteen to a tall city boy who promised to, "Buy (her) a baby at Sears Roebuck just as soon as he raised (her.)" Aunt Lou was the city mouse of the family. She'd had all the countrified living she wanted growing up and had no desire to get back to the farm. She still planted big vegetable gardens, but she hid them behind roses, marigolds and other cutting flowers. She dressed like a city woman in hose with a seam down the back, tailored suits she made herself and lovely drapey dresses, topped by hats with discreet veils.

The next oldest, Chloe, married a chicken farmer. She made no pretense of ever being more than she was, the salt of the earth. Aunt Chloe wore her long hair in a neat little bun, topped her dresses with mother Hubbard aprons, wore sensible shoes and sometimes, to her sister's horror, even white anklets! She, of course, also had a big vegetable garden and didn't waste a row on frivolities like flowers.

Both of them were close to five feet tall, with white hair, perfect complexions and the cutest little chipmunk cheeks I had ever seen.  Of course I didn't know either one of them until they were close to sixty, but I thought they were adorable.

I am well over five feet, have dark very short hair and have never seriously considered growing vegetables. I never think of myself as beautiful, or cute, and especially never adorable, but when I looked in the mirror this morning . . . as I am trying to lose weight for my health,  I realized there is a side effect to that I never even dreamed of.

I think I'm going to have the same chipmunk cheeks those great aunts had and I'm wondering how they will look on one very tall chipmunk.