Going through the old photo albums, I came across a picture of her—young, soft-eyed, and smiling. A reflection of my own. It made me realise that no matter how far I grow, I will always remain my mother’s daughter. Everything she once adored and wore growing up, I now embrace—not out of obligation, but from a quiet yearning to stay connected to that girl in the frame, forever frozen in time.
Medora. Glamour shade 228. She wore it in almost every picture. When I asked, she remembered the exact shade without pause. And I knew what I had to do. I found it for her—long forgotten, buried in time. But when she held it again, it was as if something clicked back into place.
For a moment, she was eighteen again. Carefree. Living through the summers of the early 2000s, laughing with friends under warm skies. Sometimes, I wonder: why that same shade?
Maybe it was more than a preference. Maybe it was inheritance—a silent sign for the daughter to carry it forward. To give away a part of herself in the hopes that something sacred would not be forgotten. And maybe, as uneasy as I’ve sometimes felt about becoming my mother, I’ve realised that everything I now own that once belonged to her—lipsticks, earrings, journals—are just gentle whispers echoing the same truth: “You are me. And I am you.”
Nostalgia often demands more than memory. It asks for protection, preservation, and someone to safeguard its pieces. Maybe repeating the same shades and wearing the same colours is our way of promising to keep fragments of the past alive until they find their way back to the ones who truly deserve them. Because somehow, somewhere, the image of your mother in that lipstick stayed with you. And if you admired her enough, you’d take it upon yourself to continue what she started—completing the sentence she once began, hoping those who come after you will do the same.
A mother’s lipstick isn’t worn on her hand. It’s worn on her mouth—the place from which lullabies once came. Where words of affirmation were spoken. Where bedtime stories began. It’s where your name was first whispered into the world with love. So maybe a lipstick is never just a lipstick. Maybe it’s a legacy.
