Hey friend! 

I'm turning forty next month (😬🎉✨), so today I have a little story and some reflections for you about getting older…

 

We stand in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. She’s on her white, plastic stool and tip toes, leaning toward the glass to examine her new teeth coming in on the bottom. I’m dabbing my face dry. She hands me the package and scooches closer as I rip the notch and squeeze thick, green clay out the top. 

 

I smooth the cool mask over my fresh skin, and she watches carefully. Intrigued. I move slowly. For myself, as it’s something I’m working on, in everything. For her, a lesson in unrushed self-love.  

 

“Mama, what’s that for?” she asks.

 

“It keeps my skin healthy and soft,” I say. 

 

“Do I need it?” she says.

 

“Maybe when you’re older,” I tell her. 

 

She sets her neon Shark watch timer for fifteen minutes, so she can be in charge of letting me know when it’s time to rinse my face. We make our way to the bench seat on the back patio–snuggled up close–and chat until the cool evening air hardens and cracks the clay on my cheeks.

 

A day later, we’re back in the bathroom in the same spots. As she stands on her stool and tip toes, she organizes my makeup bag, and I drip and massage oil from a blush colored bottle into my scalp. 

 

“Mama, what’s that for?” Same question. A different day. 

 

“Why do you do it?” she adds.

 

It takes me a few seconds to answer. Why do I do this? What is an appropriate answer for a five-year-old girl?

 

“It makes me feel like I’m taking care of myself,” I tell her.

 

I leave out the part that my thick hair is still just that in many places, but not the ones nearest my face. I leave out the part where I saw a Facebook ad and very quickly entered my credit card number. I leave out the part that I’m turning forty in a few weeks and I’m doing this thing where I’m looking at all the categories of my life and asking, How can I be doing that better? and What do I need to feel calm? I leave out the part that for some reason massaging oil onto the thin sections of my hairline makes me feel like I have the tiniest bit of control in something, even though I know the absolute truth: I have zero say in how quickly time passes and so often, what it brings my way. 

 

“Well, I like watching you take care of yourself,” she says. 

 

My reflection smiles at hers, and her toothless grin flashes back at me.

 

Maybe when she’s a little older, she'll scour the Target beauty aisles and slather clay on her face with me. Maybe when she’s a little older than that, she’ll learn the art of applying mascara without getting clumpy lashes. Maybe when she’s my age, she’ll seek the need to improve her already gorgeous ebony hair. Maybe not. 

 

Either way, one of my deepest desires for my daughter is to feel beautiful and worthy without any of it. For her to feel love, confidence, and the purest peace in her heart, without walking by a mirror. In order for that to happen, she needs to see me feeling beautiful and worthy without any of it, too. 

 

Many, many days pass where my fuchsia and tangerine makeup bag with the silver zippers sits in darkness in that middle drawer in the bathroom. Many days pass where all I apply to my forehead, cheeks, and nose are coconut oil and sunscreen. 

 

But on the days when we stand in our spots in the bathroom, where she searches for signs of new teeth and I dab and massage anti-aging products into my skin and hair, I pray she sees past the plastic bottles and packages, and sees my truest, ageless self, beaming back at her in the mirror. 

 

I pray I see it, too.