We replaced our bathroom vanity last week. The old one was getting pretty tired and it was bland anyway, cheap white vanity with plastic handles and a plastic, one-piece counter/sink. It had most of the finish worn off from repeated cleaning and, thanks to one of my children, a patch of dried fletching glue when a bottle of it was spilled while fixing arrows. Don’t ask why he was doing it in the bathroom, maybe he thought enough damage had already been done to my dining room table when they cut up an elk and gouged it with bone fragments. *sigh…such is the life of a mother of boys…*
The new vanity is lovely. Dark wood, countertop that looks like a solid piece of stone, elegant brushed metal pulls on the drawers…lovely. I can have nice things now that the kids are grown.
Replacing it meant pulling the old one out and that required emptying it first. I threw out quite a few partial bottles of old lotions and conditioners that didn’t do my skin or hair any favours. How many round hair brushes does one person need?
It was my drawer of cosmetics that took the biggest hit though. Pots of glittering mineral powders, eyeliners with spongey ends to create a smokey eye, liquid eyeliner that I never mastered the art of using…and lipstick…tubes and tubes of lipstick.
I don’t like lipstick. I want to like lipstick, but I don’t. I don’t like the way it feels. I have never managed to find a shade that I think looks good on me. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I kept one tube that has a tiny nubbin left. I’ve used it right down to the plastic inner tube which holds the creamy, lipsticky part. I love it and the company no longer offers that shade. Want to know what colour it is?
It’s clear. It’s basically lip balm in a lipstick tube. It barely even qualifies as lipstick except that it was beside the other tubes in the cosmetics department.
So why keep buying tubes of it and then letting them lay in the bottom of a drawer until they have that rancid smell? Simple. I’m vain.
It’s a flaw, I know, and not my only one, but it’s the one I’m going to talk about today. I’m 46, that’s not a secret. I’m getting older and it’s lately that I’m starting to notice some things about my appearance that I’m not loving.
My skin is getting as dry as the freaking Sahara in July. There’s a droopy, little crease at the corner of one eye, I’m sure the other one isn’t far behind. There is a patch of silver on the top of my head which seems to be spreading at an alarming rate. And, to my horror, there is one nasty, coarse, black hair that persists in sprouting below my chin. Last summer, I uttered words to my sister I never thought I would have to say…can you pluck my whisker? *groan* Scarlett O’Hara-esque dramatic sweep of my arm over my eyes*
Yesterday I stood before the mirror and gently tugged at my temples, then let go, then tugged at my temples, then let go. I thought to myself: 26, 46, 26, 46, then sighed and walked away.
What’s really so wrong with looking my age anyway? Why not just give up the make-up and hair dye? Why not be happy with the way God and nature intended me to be? You know, in the privacy of my own home, I mostly am – happy with my un-cosmetic-ed face and the thought of running into the grocery store without a full coat of spackle and Maybelline no longer completely horrifies me.
Still, I’m not quite ready to pitch my entire arsenal of enhancements in the trash, I might never be ready. I know one thing though, the little boy who held my hand yesterday as we walked through the woods didn’t care that I hadn’t bothered to put on makeup, neither did My Sweet who held my hand as we walked later that afternoon. The people who matter, the people whose opinions I care about, don’t care whether I used the brow powder or the brow pencil. They don’t care if my hair is blonde or brown or grey. I don’t tell better stories with makeup on. I don’t build a better tower of blocks with makeup on. I don’t make a better friend, grandma, or wife with makeup on.
I think I’ve finally had it with lipstick, but I don’t think I’ll be giving up the rest just yet. I’m pretty ok with my age. I like who I am right now and I’m pretty ok with how I look too. Every year that passes seems to free me a little more from my perceptions of what other people think and putting stock in opinions that really don’t matter very much.
Hmph…maybe aging isn’t all bad after all.
