When You Stop Wrinkling Your Nose

Amazing stuff happens when you stop wrinkling your nose. At least that has been the case for me as I have continued, with the eye of an artist, to burrow into my own fears and judgments about aging and its inevitable signs. While I still stare into the mirror, vanity peering over my shoulder, and evaluate again and again, the state of my wrinkled face, I am seeing that face and its evolving sculpture with greater kindness.

So much has my awareness changed that, just the other day, walking with a plateful of food from the buffet at a Chinese restaurant to take my seat with my family, I nearly gaped at a woman sitting with a companion at a table. There was something compelling, a certain “je ne sais quoi” about the lines and creases in her face. I wanted to say, “I love your aging face! Please sit tight while I grab my camera.” Instead, I walked on by, pleased, at least, to find that I am seeing beauty where once I might have turned up my nose, or, almost worse, seen nothing of note, at all.

Broaching the subject of wrinkles and aging with friends is not a way to begin a rollicking conversation. While many people, like my wise friend, Linda Smith, have become actively involved in healing the scarred landscape of our collective unconscious by re-conceptualizing aging as a sage-ing process (see http://www.sage-ingguild.org/), most of us are still struggling with the old paradigm.

As a society, we are more prone to remove wrinkles (or try to) than to revere them. Women, in particular, experience intense discomfort with signs of aging or, for that matter, anything that separates itself from the pack of wolves we call perfection. When does this toxic vanity about our appearance begin?

Recently my two beautiful daughters, my seventeen-year-old granddaughter, and I stood in the chilly evening air in front of Lauren’s high school following a choral performance. For reasons I can’t recall, Lauren mentioned the dimple in her right cheek. “I hate my dimple,” she said. “When I smile it makes my cheek pooch out. See?” She inserted her finger into the tiny well of her dimple. “Here’s my good side,” and she turned her head to the right. “On this side I look like I weigh 120.” She turned her face to the left. “And, here’s my bad side. I look like I weigh 145.”

Bad side?

My daughters and I rolled our eyes. Lauren continued, “And, another thing is, my dimple is always there, even if I’m not smiling. It looks like someone poked me. Look at my mom’s dimple. It’s this nice little curve and it only shows up when she smiles.”

As we moved on to other subjects, I was painfully aware of the rarity of these opportunities for the three most important people in my life to be gathered in one spot. For the fifteen or twenty minutes of time during which we occupied that patch of concrete, I felt the trembling of my own heart as I looked at the amazing beauty of these young women. My granddaughter stood with the lights overhead illuminating her jaw-dropping good looks. I stood, immobilized, yearning to gather these three beloveds up and tell them how much I loved them. I wailed internally for the separation that we have from each other, both by geography and by other forces more complex.

And, I wonder, how can it be otherwise if we are separated from ourselves and from each other by judgment?

That wrinkling of the nose that we do as we examine ourselves in the mirror is a habit. And, like every habit, no matter how ingrained, it can be changed. I am finding that, as I have consciously followed this personal and peculiar investigation to find beauty in wrinkles, I am experiencing moments of peace, beauty, and healing which come, unexpected, like a rainbow or glorious sunset.

As I unwrinkle my nose in reference to aging, I am led (by the nose?) to other areas of myself. Reticence, a lack of self-confidence, has been part of my make-up—a large wrinkle in the un-ironed shirt of my psyche—for many years. Determined to iron out that wrinkle, or at least expose it for whatever it is, I have been taking guitar lessons, daring to find my inner musician, and to drop the self-consciousness about my singing voice. A tall order. However, a rainbow appeared last week in my younger daughter’s kitchen. I sat perched on a stool, my daughter’s guitar propped on my lap, and played “Amazing Grace” while my daughter and sister and I sang. It was a glorious time.

“Mom, you sounded really good. Your voice sounded really good. I like what you’re doing.”

The world shifted. A lifetime of choking ended, enabling me last evening to sing a short song to a small group of people and to guide a dance to the song. My voice didn’t quiver. I was settled in my bones, in my wrinkles, being more of myself than I’d been five minutes before. And, I laughed. When I looked later at my face in the mirror I was flushed with excitement, the exuberant child in me in full swing.

May you find beauty in all of your wrinkles, interior and exterior. May the clouds of your reticence be replaced with rainbows. May the wrinkles on your nose be ones of delight, not judgment, disdain, or recoiling, as you see more and more of yourself. And may you laugh at the wrinkles in your life—no matter where they are, or what brought them into being.

Who knows where a new nose might take you?

Please go to this blog site of Pat Harris (http://cruisingslowly.blogspot.com) to see her varied and delightful entries and to access a wonderful video of Jenny Joseph reading her poem called, “Warning”, the one about living life with less inhibition—less reticence. The Red Hat Society was founded based on this poem. You can directly access this post and the video this way: http://cruisingslowly.blogspot.com/2010/10/warning.html.

And please go to the blog site of Gaea Yudron (http://sagesplay.blogspot.com/) to see her insightful posts on aging creatively. Her current post includes this quote from a collection of writings by Florida Scott-Maxwell. “But we also find as we age we are more alive than seems likely, convenient or even bearable.”

Amen.