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 meant for ladies vaginas. 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 boxy white bedroom phone and say "I need to give you a 'high colonic' enema (now she was an expert) and hold the bag six feet in the air. And, (she was breathless at this point) I need to use soap as an irritant. She would lather up a fat pale green bar of Irish Spring Soap into the red bag 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 kneeling in her porcelain tub. This was a daily event during my high school hours. "Doctors orders." My mother really thought of herself as a doctor and even worse, as my doctor. She had a black bag purse that most resembled an antique doctors bag and drove her Volvo station wagon like it was an ambulance blasting through red lights "Mom!!" I say "It's okay if you honk while doing it" More importantly she thought doctor mom was a suitable role for herself. Secretly she would've liked her Volvo wagon in red, but requested navy blue at the showroom and sobbed when it arrived in light blue.