When I was a pre-teen, I remember well my mother's fear of aging, how she'd look into the magnifying mirror, fixated on the smallest wrinkles and plucking gray hairs. Then, as now, my mother and I were consumers of those glossy magazines in which every woman featured on a cover looks as if she's 23 - whether she is, in fact, 12 or 50.
I was angry when my mother's mirror got in the way of our talks. All around us were shelves of books and sometimes, as background noise, the television would flash photos from Cambodia with skulls piled up high. I vowed I would not fall prey to the fear of looking my age.
Well, time has moved on and now the massacres happen in new parts of the world. But the bulk of the media that reaches me concerns beauty. All around me are tanning salons, teeth whiteners, forty-dollar night creams that promise to reverse signs of aging, and fliers for every kind of nip and tuck.
It's hard for me not to notice the changes in the mirror. My hair is not as soft, not as thick, not as straight. My eyes slant down at the outer edges. My wrists have little lines. I look somewhat like my younger self when the lighting is in my favor, but on a sunny day or under fluorescent lighting, not at all.
I didn't expect to be so scared of aging. At the grocery store, where Christie Brinkley looks 23 on a magazine cover, just as she did when I was a girl, I overspend our budget by adding expensive creams to the shopping cart. Conversations with my husband have become like this one:
"My knee caps look wrinkled."
"Why are you looking at your knee caps?"
One night, while getting ready for an evening out, and wearing a dress long enough to cover my knees, my husband stands behind me as I look into the mirror, cursing the lines I can't hide. I say, "This new one by my mouth--it makes me look like Lady Elaine Fairchild."
I expect him to say "What wrinkle?" That's what he used to say when I pointed out my gray hairs and wider hips. But he says, "We're getting old, honey. This is what we wanted when we got married--to grow old together."
At first, I think I might hate him forever for not telling me the aging is all in my head and I look exactly as I did when we first met. He tells me later, when I'm not feeling so vulnerable and when he's found the words, that I am very beautiful to him--it's obsessing into a mirror that's unattractive.
I'm trying to be fearless. To allow my life experience and my wear-and-tear to show. To let myself choose what media is important in my life and what is not.
I think of my mother, who wastes little time with her mirror these days. She still has all the features I love best about her: a warmth in her eyes, an easy smile, and a vivacious laugh that interrupts all of her best stories. She is a passionate reader, loves to speak the language of whatever country she visits, and opens her mind like someone dedicated to being a learner for life.
Maybe beauty (the kind that counts) is lost when we are so busy looking at ourselves that we miss the world and our chance to contribute to it. Imagine what might become of us and our world if - for every moment we spent worrying about our looks - we spend those hours and dollars making the world a better place.
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