Wrinkles

Did you ever have the feeling that you've been 30 your whole life? Or, perhaps, 32? Maybe it's because I'm the oldest child in my family, but I feel like I've been turning 32 for a long time. I know that there are some people who have a hard time getting older. They worry about their looks, health and mind. Maybe I will feel differently 20 years from now, but today I say, "Bring. it. on."

This is not to say that I am blessed with especially good looks, health or mind. As a matter of fact, I had several humiliating experiences this year in regards to...um....the above. And I should probably clarify that they were potentially humiliating experiences. You see, I believe...

(and have ever since the 3rd grade when a certain boy, who shall remain unnamed, called me names and spit on me, to which I turned my back and went straight to the principle with out thinking twice and got him to sit in detention AND apologize to me, even if it was begrudgingly. Did I feel bad? Did I cry? No siree Bob. I tattled. Take that Frankie.)

...you can really save face with how you react to the humiliation. You can smile and forget it (in which case, most everyone else forgets it too) or you can carry it deep in your heart until your heart breaks and you become a nuisance. Everyone feels like they're walking on egg shells around you. Bahh. BAHH, I say.

So back to getting older, I remember when I was seven or eight admiring my piano teacher's hands. She was middle aged, which to me at the time meant 32. She was Asian and beautiful and lived in this cool studio apartment in San Fransisco. Her grand piano almost took up the entire living space. Her bathroom was nasty though, I don't think she ever cleaned the grout in her tile. But her hands were lovely. I admired the short trimmed nails and scars on her hands. She often had bandages wrapped around her fingers. I asked her one time where she got those scars and she said she got them from her job as a cook.

I must have been a weird kid because I always wanted hands that had character, wisdom or showed how much I worked. (I know my mom and dad are rolling their eyes...I meant cool work, not cleaning your room work.)

Even now, I really don't mind the wrinkles creeping up around my eyes. I even have a scar on my right hand. Not from working though. No, it was from banging it on a heater on my way to band practice in 6th grade. I remember looking down my clarinet to the blood dripping off my hand and being quite startled. I had no idea it was that bad. I was running to band practice and was late and didn't have time to really look at it until we were waiting for the trumpets to tune up. But, it adds character nonetheless.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I like imperfections. Flaws that speak of some thing's true character. We had an old house in Tacoma with character. And we loved it. I don't think we will ever buy a new house. Or new car for that matter.

I don't understand why Hollywood keeps pushing all these impossibly perfect faces with impossibly flawed characters. Shouldn't we really admire people who are the other way around?

And before you call me a hypocrite, I would have married my husband even if he wasn't impossibly good looking. It just happened that way, ok? It's actually something I struggle with because I have known my whole life that I'm not a great beauty. I've always thought of myself as "cute with a nice personality" or "cute and interesting" or "cute and weird," but never beautiful. Which was always OK with me because I wasn't interested in marrying a beautiful person.

But I did, and now we have these beautiful children and I'm surround by all this beauty that just sort of compounds the fact that I'm not....as...beautiful. Which is still ok with me. But I just sometimes feel like the odd man out.

Back once again to the wrinkles. I value all the experiences I've had in my almost 32 years. I think they've made me I better person. I like the fact that people assume I know stuff because I look older. I like the fact that I don't feel as lost when I'm following new directions or that I'm not as gullible and naive.

I feel like I know what Elder Wirthlin's mom meant when she said, "Come what may and love it." Or Gratanio, in The Merchant of Venice, when he says, "With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." Am I tempting fate? Maybe. If you believe in that sort of thing.

You see those wrinkles? They're laugh lines, crying lines, wisdom lines, sleepless-night-baby-nursing lines and I wouldn't trade them for the world.