My Self Image
I have historically never had a problem with the idea of growing old. Of course, this mindset was always conjured while the face looking back at me in the mirror was still young and unlined by life’s hills and valleys. My hands were not wrinkled and time had not painted the brown spots of age on their backs. All the perky anatomical parts of me had not yet decided to sit out the last few dances of the decade, opting for mass over movement. In time, I began to dread the face in the mirror each morning. When did my eyes start to look so tired? When did my hair turn from the smoothness of youth to the coarse wiriness of age? Where did those lines on my forehead come from? Of course I never took the time to answer any of these questions before sliding the medicine cabinet door open to move my face out of frame.
(My Eyes)
One day, I thought how nice it would be to feel beautiful again. I decided to put up a reminder note on the bathroom mirror that simply said “Beautiful” with a smiley face on it. Instead of dreading the tired and puffy-faced person who always showed up in the mirror, I began to admire my eyes looking back at me because they have been the movie projector of my life. They have blessed me with all of my visual memories, seeing holes in the toes of my tiny red sneakers that were made when I gave up on trying to walk and resorted back to crawling because it was faster, the shiny bits of glistening shale in the sand at the beach, the first time I saw Ricky, and the first time I laid eyes on our newborn daughter. The list is long and they are blessings every one. My eyes aren’t tired. They are well used and still looking at beautiful things every day with a greater wisdom.
(My Hair)
My hair will never be cut and styled as it was so easily done years ago, although it is a great sport about hair color. It doesn’t mind being red, or auburn, or surprisingly pink. It is full and wavy and sometimes rests in ringlets on my shoulders that I would have killed for back in my spiral perm days of the 80’s. It has come to life on its own, freely reacting to the world and the weather, never doing what is expected of it and fully rejecting conformity. My hair has told me that its time to move on from certain things and embrace newer and inevitable beauty. I’m taking some life lessons from my beautiful grey hair.
(My Wrinkles)
When I hold no purposeful expression on my face at all, people often ask me “what’s wrong?” and surprised by their question, I tell them “nothing is wrong”. Then my brow will furrow on purpose from wondering why they asked me that in the first place. It occurred to me that my “normal” expression must be one of troubled thoughts or sadness. My facial wrinkles are part of the body’s projected statement to the world about how I feel and where I’ve been in life. Knowing this, I practice smiles every day. When I think a happy thought, I smile. When I hear something funny, I let go of the reigns and laugh out loud, and then hold that lingering smile just a moment longer. When I witness a kindness out in the world, I try to reflect what I feel on the inside of me to the outside of me. Today, I strive for wrinkles. I squint in the sun. I smile often, and find reasons to laugh every day. I want people who don’t know me to look at me and be in awe of how good my life has been.
(My Hands)
My hands, my hands, my hands…. I see them every day. They grip the steering wheel every morning on the way to work. I see them lying still on the keyboard here waiting for instructions from my brain. They are wrinkled and spotted when they are resting inactive in front of me. When I first began noticing this, I wondered when it could have happened. Then I remembered something very treasured to me: my grandmother’s hands. Aged and bony, papery-thin skinned and darkly spotted….and very loved. I remember holding one of her hands in both of mine and feeling every vein and wrinkle and joint. They were the hands that tickled me, that clapped for me. Those hands picked wild berries off the trees and waged berry wars in the back yard. They were the hands that pointed my eyes up to look at a squirrel or a bird in tree branches heavy and pregnant after a summer rain, and they were the hands that would shake those same tree branches to shower my face with a splash of unexpected water from the leaves. So my hands are becoming. My hands have the same power of love as my grandmother’s did. And I notice when my hands are idle, the wrinkles are there to be studied and mulled over. But when I hold my daughter’s hand, they are gone. I like to think its love. And then I smile. |
