Purple flower, August 2012

“Regardless of what fashion arbiters would have you believe, time is not the enemy of women. It is a filter. It is a fine-mesh screen that day by day, year by year, filters out the muck of insecurity and self-doubt. Time is a purification system that has made me wiser, freer, better, some say sexier. Are those the actions of an enemy?”

I turned 37 this month. Maybe it’s from losing the last of the “baby weight” over the past 6 months, maybe it’s the inevitable result of now being on the older end of the 30s decade, or maybe it’s the conglomeration of hundreds (thousands?) of hours of lost sleep since becoming a mother more than 6 years ago, but I do feel like my face looks suddenly older.

When we lived in Cusco, Peru, for a year, that dry air at 11,000 feet elevation instantly aged everyone. It was like stepping into a time machine that showed you what you would look like in 5, 6, 7 years’ time – every tiny line becoming visible or deepening. Now, when I look at myself in the mirror, I think “Oh, yes, there she is, that woman I first saw in Peru.” It’s interesting to see her, fascinating to see time at work on my own face. Truthfully, a little disarming too, especially the furrow marks becoming etched in my brow. Do I frown so much? I think. Maybe it’s from squinting. Maybe I need glasses.

I used to think I looked thirty-ish. Now I think I look “late thirty-ish.” Which is what I am, even if somewhere inside, I’m still think of myself as 28. Now I look like a woman, not a girl. A mother. A grown-up.

Recently, while going through an old stack of papers, I found the quote above, on a strip of paper I ripped out from a long-forgotten magazine. I don’t know who said or wrote it, but I like the sentiment. It’s one I agree with in principle. And as the years go by, seemingly faster and faster, it’s one I hope to take more and more to heart.