#Starface

It was the loneliest summer without my mother. I thought that her death would be the worst of it. I was told that time would heal all wounds, but time has only served to deepen the ones that my mother's absence permanently carved into me. No one mentioned the lessons that only a mother would be prepared to teach her daughter. No one mentioned how much I'd still need her.

There were many "firsts" that came with reaching puberty that my father was simply not equip to handle. The body hair came first. He thought that would be easy. A simple shave. A lesson or two about razor bumps. He thought we only had to worry about the hair on my arms and legs, but when I asked about the hair "down there" his face went blank. We were both speechless.

Next came, my menstrual cycle. The blood flowed like a faucet with no knobs. There was no turning it off. We did our research. We got both pads and tampons. It took a lot of trial and error but finally it got to a point where I wasn't ruining my clothes anymore. I think that traumatized the both of us.

For a while, Dad and I thought that we were in the clear. Then, my body started changing. I got a little taller. Curves started forming. I got my first bra. I had become a woman. Well, young woman as dad liked to remind me. And with those words, I had begun to embrace the changes that were happening to my body. Until my face began to change.

I tried everything under the sun to rid my face of blackheads and pimples. Nothing ever seemed to work. Dad tried his best to help. He looked for home remedies like smearing toothpaste on my face but all that did was leave me with a minty fresh mess on my pillowcases the next morning. We tried black charcoal masks. We bought several different cleansers and face washes, but our efforts were in vain.

It was the night before my first day of school. This was the eve of my freshman year of high school. I could hear the chants of insults now. I could picture someone saying, "I'd like a zit-a-roni pizza with extra zits please." I lie in my bed agonizing at the thought. I could not fathom starting my year off as the ugliest girl in school. If only my mother were here, she'd know what to do. She'd know the appropriate skincare regimen that would solve all of this. I cried, and I cried until I couldn't feel myself crying anymore.

"Dry those tears, child," a feminine voice spoke to me. I looked around in the darkness of my room to see who it was. There was no one. 

"Looking for me," a square-shaped yellow figure with a smile emerged. 

"I'm Big Yellow and I got just what you need." 

I was speechless. How was this little square talking to me?

"You know what I need?" I asked.

"Don't you want to get rid of those zits, little zit-a-roni?"

How did Big Yellow know?

"Now, now, don't worry about all that," said Big Yellow, "put some of these Hydro-Stars on those zits baby." And with those words, Big Yellow began to shoot star shaped patches onto all the blemishes on my face.

"What will the Hydro-Stars do?" I asked.

"Just let 'em sit 'til the morning and you'll see," and just like that Big Yellow vanished.

When the morning came, I was anxious to peel the Hydro-Stars away from my face. Would the zits and pimples be gone? Did Big Yellow really have just what I needed? I peeled one of the stars away. Underneath, the skin was smoother than it had ever been. I was in disbelief. I zipped through snatching the rest of the stars off. I knew that one of them would have failed me but to my surprise my face was free of blemishes. Could this be? Did Big Yellow really save the day?

On the way out the door, Dad noticed my acne free face. "Did one of those cleansers we bought finally work?" he asked. "No," I responded, "I think mom sent me a guardian angel." I left for school feeling more confident than ever.

Thank you Big Yellow for having just what I needed when I needed it.  

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