Twenty Five Shades of Face

Ok either this will be the most ballsy or the most narcissistic post of all time.  And right now, I’ve reached a stage in my life where I don’t really care what anyone thinks about it..yay!  Folks, there are liberations that come after turning 50.  A distinct confidence in whatever blunders and awkward maneuvers just start to add to your charm, at least that’s how I’m rockin in.  Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!

So today I’m going to write about my face.  I got my hair cut pretty short the other day.  Shorter than it’s been in a long time.  And darker.  I just felt like a change and went for it.  I’ll reveal that look at the end here (no pre scrolling peeking,  I seeeee you!).

It got me thinking about my face.  Because, honestly, I’m not a huge fan of my body at the moment.  So to throw off the asymmetry further of my already imbalanced  30 lbs too much  me from the neck down with a shorter haircut, it better have a purpose. 

And what I decided after obsessing about my hair when I got home was I am deciding this haircut is an homage to my face.

I just may as well come out and say it.

I love my face.

I’m just gonna own it.

When you think about it though, it really has very little to do with me.  It’s just what I got, luck of the draw, when I came in to this world.

There are many reasons I love my face.

First off, I just think it’s a good face.  I think my face is a perfect balance of complex and fresh and simple.

Kind of like my roots now that I think about it.  My mother, Dorothy, was literally a fresh faced farm girl from the cornfields of Illinois.  She grew up in a small town, with a family farm, in rural LeRoy, Illinois.

My father, on the other hand, grew up in New York City raised in a certain level of sophistication, prep schools, Ivy League education, money.

Maybe my face blends those worlds, like my own version of Green Acres in every smile.

I also love that I can’t hide my emotions on my face.  Ok sometimes that’s a love/hate situation but mostly it’s a love.

I love it that when I walked in to John’s case manager’s office a couple of weeks ago, he said “You are not doing well.  Your face looks totally different today.  Your normal shine is gone”.   He was right of course.  Sometimes as hard as it is, it’s just good to be seen in this world.

I love it that people tell me I look different in all kinds of moods.  I love that I have a face that is unpredictable.

I love my nose.  Which makes me laugh remembering once years ago, a rival gang in a blog war decided that I was basically hideous because of my “big nose”.  That makes me laugh because I really love my nose.  Sure it’s maybe big and kind of bumpy in a way (Cindy used to call it the “bumpy ball”) but it reminds me of my mother’s side of the family.  And honestly I love the character it gives my face.  I remember a friend of Cindy’s (and mine), Neal, used to back in the day call me “pastry nose”.  He’d say “I just want to reach over and take a bite of it”.   Love it.

I also love my eyes.  I love the color and the shape.  I think I have kind of cat eyes.  I also got those from my mother’s side of the family and I really have my Uncle Junie’s eyes.  I look in his face and I see such a reflection, especially the sparkle in his eyes.  I know when my eyes are sparkling and when they are not.  Another thing I can’t hide well.

I love my smile.  That comes from my Dad I think.  In fact, as I age, I think I look more and more like my father.   And it’s because of the smile I think.  Or maybe the way gravity is expressing itself on both of us.  But I love looking at photos of us together and seeing our faces age similarly.

I love my skin.  Which in itself is a miracle.

I got hit with a bad case of acne, oddly, after high school.  I mean BAD.  I went to Dermatologists and skin care professionals and was told over and over I’d just have to live with the scars (yes I had those deep pits).  What a life sentence at age 20!  And I knew even then I had a good face but it was literally scarred for life.  Ouch.

Until I came to Arizona and went to one of those home parties -like a Tupperware party but for skin care.  Their claim to fame was that all of their products were aloe vera based.  I bought one thing.  An oil free aloe face cream.

I’ll never forget looking in that dim lit mirror in the bathroom of my first apartment and thinking “those scars are filling in”.

And sure enough they did.  I went from being a person who felt children stared at me in grocery lines because of my horrible pitting cystic acne, to a middle aged woman who gets compliments on her skin.  Go figure.

Never get too attached to your misery I say.  It can turn on you.

I love my lips.  Now that has to do with mainly how I know how to use them.  I won’t elaborate but I suspect any man I’ve ever made out with will attest to that fact.  Dang I miss that.  It’s coming.  And I know it’s just like riding a bike.

Well I guess that’s enough self aggrandizement for one morning.  But I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I’m sitting here smiling after writing this post.  I dare you to do one.  You’ll see what I mean.

It’s good to toot your own horn sometimes.

But in this case I’m sending a nod back to my lineage.  To all the faces before me that created this one and handed it to me for my use this time around.  I do think I’m wearing it well.  And I’ll lower it, closing my eyes in gratitude for one thing they made easy for me in this lifetime.  Cuz God knows I got screwed in other ways.  But not my face.

And now the big reveal.  My new hair.

Do you like it?  Short and sassy.

My face and I like it just fine.