Skin

Paralyzed in the skincare aisle of CVS: I stare hard at the face creams, as if looking at them long enough will reveal a secret, a youth dew, an elixir to erase 20 years from my face.

I used to buy expensive creams. I believed the more I spent on potions with Shea butter and aloe and wheat germ oil and jojoba, the better my chances of turning back the clock. But I couldn’t afford $90 an ounce. Then I started reading labels and saw that most face creams contain the same stuff.

I also remembered something I once heard: that motor oil offers the same benefits as face cream. And I thought of my mother, whose skin was practically lineless until the day she died (smoking and drinking and lung cancer be damned), and who, for as long as I could remember, gave herself Crisco facials and walked around the house glistening in vegetable grease.

I was a teenager in southern California in the late 1970s, where baking in the sun and wearing little more than Bain de Soleil was just what you did. No one knew from skin cancer or premature wrinkling or SPF, except Mrs. Crisco Face, and who listened to parents anyway.

My skin is soft, but after a walk in 22-degrees, it feels like sandpaper. Plus, the powder foundation I wear makes my wrinkles look like cracks in the sidewalk. The other night, while removing eye makeup, a pinch of skin stayed pinched and pushed to one side long after I’d let go.

Now I’m a skin-cream maven, slathering products all over my face at every opportunity, like over-watering a parched and dying houseplant. The truth is, aside from Botox, nothing is going to give me the tight, lineless skin of a 20- or 30-year-old, because I’m not 20 or 30 years old.

And yet, away from a mirror, I sometimes forget that I am the age I am. When I am swimming or hiking, feeling fit and energized, I forget that my face reveals my age.

When I do remember, I try to look kindly, even lovingly, upon my aging face, with its wrinkles and puffs and sags; to see its lines as imprints of my history; of strength and perseverance; sorrow and laughter; struggle and triumph; of life vigorously lived.