My Bequeathed Lipstick Case

For Christmas last year, my son gave me a lipstick case he had carefully selected at a temporary “store” his school set up so kids could purchase gifts for their parents with teacher supervision. It was adorable how excited he was to give it to me. 

Unfortunately, the case went MIA for a while, but I found it last week while searching for my daughter’s lost glasses. Excited by its return, we all spend a few minutes re-admiring the case until my son said, “Oh, I know, when you die Mom, I can give this to my wife.”

So, thanks for that. Does an appropriate response to this statement exist? It seems like there should be one, that a more sagacious mother would even have one on her speed dial, but a week later, I’m still at a loss for a response.

Even worse, this comment followed an earlier comment my son made to my dad. Out of nowhere, before sitting down to dinner one night, he said, “Hey, Grandpa, do you know that when I’m an old man, you’ll be dead?” That’s my little son, the bastion of useful information. After I scraped my jaw off the floor with a putty knife, I sputtered a few things, and of course later that night, we had an in-depth conversation about the inappropriate nature of the comment, that went something like, “There’s no need to state the obvious, particularly when the obvious sounds rather morbid.” Clearly, last week’s comment to me demonstrates that the conversation had great meaning for him, as well as a lasting impact.

I’m not sure when this idea of passing things on to his offspring first entered my son’s mind, but the lipstick case is not the first item to be bequeathed. Well, it is the first item of mine that he’s bequeathed for me, to a lady who perchance has not even been born yet. But he’s actually made plans already for many of his personal belongings to pass on to his children when he becomes a father someday. Most notably, my son wants to pass on his PSP (it’s a hand-held video game device, in case any of you are like me and would have no clue if your kids didn’t have one) and all his PSP games to his children someday. In his mind, I think he is picturing his children on hands and knees, kissing his feet in gratitude for a gift they could never have imagined. I, too, remember thinking this at one point in my childhood, imagining the rapt look on my children’s faces as I unveiled my Barbie house, complete with colorful, cardboard-like walls and a string to pull the elevator up and down.

Yes, my son’s PSP is also one that my husband has had to painstakingly resuscitate on numerous occasions, even though he’s only had it for about eight months. Despite the fact that my husband and I have had several discussions with him regarding the ongoing technological advances in our world that oftentimes make past technology obsolete, he is insistent. The chronicling of our deeply deprived childhoods void of PSPs, Wiis and DVDs has, rather than impressing upon him the point that his kids will likely have something even more exciting, instead served to enhance the need to ensure that his kids will not suffer the fate of his parents. It’s convoluted, I know.

And, here’s the other thing about the passing on of the lipstick case. Isn’t that going to kind of gross his poor wife out? It’s one thing to pass on a piece of jewelry or some china, for instance, and quite another to pass on a mangy old lipstick case that’s been sitting in the bottom of my purse for 50 years or so. In the end, isn’t that a rather personal item of no monetary value that should therefore pass with me on to the sweet hereafter?

Well, in any case, I guess I better take good care of the lipstick case. In a hundred years, if all goes as planned, my future daughter-in-law will be passing it on to her daughter-in-law.