Colorful Past

Whenever I see those red rubber hot water bottles I think of my mother's administering of enemas. She used a white hard plastic nozzle that was like a sprinkler head which years later I learned was the douche bag attachment. She used this attachment to administer enemas on me. She would call the emergency room in a panic and say I just gave my daughter an enema and it didn't work, what do I do? Then she'd slam down the white boxy dial phone and say "I need to give you a 'high colonic' enema. Now she was an expert and an authority. I'm supposed to hold the bag, over my head, six feet in the air, she said. And, I need to use soap as an irritant. She was breathless with her own high-drama. She'd lather up a striped pale green bar of Irish Spring soap, filling the red plastic bottle in her pink bathroom sink and try again. As if this wasn't humiliating enough I was naked on my knees in her pink tile bathroom in her porcelain tub. This was a daily event for a spell during high school. Doctors orders, she insisted. She was unstoppable and she was on a mission and I was filling with shame. My mother really thought of herself as a doctor and even worse, as MY doctor. She had an oblong leather black bag with short looped handles resembling an antique doctors bag, that she used as a purse. She drove her Volvo station wagon like it was an ambulance blasting through red lights. "Mom!!" I shouted, its a red light. "It's okay if you honk while doing it", she'd snap. Most frightening was that she thought 'doctor mom' was a perfectly suitable role for herself. She would've preferred that her Volvo was red, like a fire truck, but requested navy blue and sobbed when it arrived from the dealership in a lighter shade of blue.