Do You See What I See?

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see someone worth loving? Someone who is loved? Do you see someone whom you love?

Many of us tolerate their our reflections for practical purposes, like teeth-brushing and face-washing, but lots of us don’t like to look that closely at ourselves. We see what we’re told to see, and the mirror only shows the flaws that have dogged us from birth. We focus on our buckteeth and bug eyes because our peers focused on them and we mistook teasing for truth. Beauty, for most of us, was unattainable without certain products, and even then, Revlon has never worked the same magic on me as it did on Cindy Crawford.

She was the supermodel I figured I had the best shot at emulating. Trust me—it never happened.

That’s okay. I know now that her Cosmo covers were touched up to make her more than she actually was. None of us is perfect; we’ve established that. Unfortunately, we are primed to pay more attention to our imperfections than they deserve, and at the cost of what makes us beautiful.

You are so much more than what you see in the glass. Mirrors only show us two dimensions. I wonder sometimes how I appear to other people. I’m happy in my own skin (finally!), but I know some beautiful people who loathe to look in the mirror. What gives?

Here’s the best kept secret in the cosmos: everyone is beautiful. That’s the dimension the mirror cannot capture, and thus the one whose existence we insist on doubting. Our divinity eludes the tool we use to measure our appeal, yet our divinity is what makes us each unique and special and extraordinary. How can you be all those things and not be beautiful? A smile—even a bucktoothed one—is irresistible when it animates the smiler’s eyes. When we accept that we are divine, we allow ourselves to be loved. When we feel loved, we feel beautiful, and our distorted perception of ourselves is realigned to reveal the inescapable truth. Beauty resides in the soul, and everybody has one of those. Some of us are out of touch with it, but we have one nonetheless.

The next time you catch your own eye, take a minute to look—really look—at yourself, and don’t look away until you glimpse that beauty. I promise you, it’s there. I can see it, even if (right now) you can’t.

With love,

Wobbly Knees and Wonky Fingers

Now that summer has finally come out of the closet, so have the summer clothes. With those clothes come the perennial questions like: “How does a busty woman hide her bra straps under a sleeveless dress?” or “When do shorts become too-shorts?”

I practice being non-judgmental at the bus stop, but one must wonder what the plaid shorts/tropical print shirt combo was thinking, and I genuinely lament the days of the plain ponytail during the ongoing parade of modern-day “manbuns”. Mostly, though, I admire the sleek young women in flippy dresses and wispy sandals, their bare legs impossibly tanned. When in my 20s, despite the arthritis, my legs were long and straight, and looked pretty darned good in a short skirt. Nowadays, I have knobbly Grinch knees that make it comically ill-advised even to wear leggings, let alone dare a raised hem.

Fortunately, mid-calf still works on me, even if my ankles are a bit thicker and less flexible than they were 30 years ago.

Make no mistake—I don’t envy the gazelles in Gap garb; I had my time in miniskirts and heels. And I’ve grown fond of my crooked knees. After all, they’ve got a ton of mileage on them. My whole body is like that, actually: mid-century modern that’s held up pretty well, all things considered.

For someone who has spent decades at war with her compostable container, this is an impressively mature attitude. I used to fear the ravages of age, blithely unaware that those ravages were happening well in advance of my dotage via the aforementioned arthritis. Perhaps I sensed my golden years might be worse as a result; though I naively imagined that when the RA burned out, my bones would be magically restored to mint condition, I was purely bitter that no one thought to warn me I’d later have to deal with the damage done in my teens. Then there was my well-meaning but misguided notion that all the pre-emptive therapies I could foist upon myself would pre-empt more pain. So much for that.

I’ve always said that I don’t care what it looks like so long as it works, and while I may have been deceiving myself in my youth, this has become my truth in middle age. My recent quest to heal—or at least subdue—the angst of last winter has led me to a more compassionate view of my physical self. Now I can regard my wonky knees and gnarled knuckles with affection. My body has been to war and come out alive. Her swollen joints are a testament to survival, to a challenge met and ultimately defeated. Every day, she gets me from point A to B and beyond, sometimes with a side order of arg and sometimes nary a whimper, but the point is, she gets me where I want to go and will, I hope, continue doing so for as long as she has breath.

Gone are the days of mid-thigh skirts and silly shoes, but that’s okay. I own my scars. I’ve earned them.

Better Times Ahead

Life is pretty good. My problems are all First World. This isn’t a negation of their existence, it’s just a recognition that problems of any ilk are relative.

Relative, not relatives.

Change continues. How I feel about some things has shifted, and that shift has resulted in an uncomfortable dissatisfaction and the prevailing sense that it’s time for Ter and me to move on.

I rounded the corner from Clover Point after work one day and was amazed to see the beauty in the above photo sitting a stone’s throw off the breakwater, so close to shore that I initially feared she’d run aground. In truth, I have no idea how deep the water is, though the Swiftsure yacht race starts from here every year, so it must be deep enough. In any event, the appearance of this one was so rare as to inspire as much concern as wonder. As I watched, however, she floated gently in a circle, presenting me with her profile and her dinky dinghy trailing aft. Ah, I thought, she’s dropped anchor … but why? There was no one on deck, no activity in the surrounding water. She was like a ghost ship, appearing from nowhere for no discernible reason, destined to depart in silence.

Twilight fell. Closing up the Ocean Room at bedtime, I saw that the ship was still in the bay, her dual masts now floodlit and the cabin sparkling with lamps set in the windows. She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in that patch of water, ever. So calm, so serene. The ocean itself was uncommonly tranquil, seemingly respective of her placid majesty. The sky darkened and she glowed more brightly, as suffused with mystery as she was with light. I was mesmerized. I was also certain that she’d be gone the next morning.

I got up in the middle of the night to check. By then the sky was so black she stood out as a constellation, a series of jewels strung in sequence to suggest the shape of a sailboat, but she was still there. She was still there at six a.m., backlit by the dawn, as stunning in silhouette as she had been awash in spotlight. I couldn’t figure it out. I had still seen no people, and the dinghy still bobbed about on its tether.

It was my day off, fortunately. I sent Ter to work and started my routine—dusting and yoga, to be followed by meditation in advance of being a writer. Sometimes I practice the meditation on my yoga disk. More often of late, I practice a mediation that Ter downloaded some months ago, but it’s on the computer so I have to set up in the Ocean Room. Just past nine o’clock, I walked into the OR and there she was, our mysterious maiden, cruising nonchalantly away from the shore on her way to … where?

Neither her presence nor its effect on me made any sense. I only know that it struck a profound chord at the time … and today I see a symbolism that could apply to our time in this locale.

She came from nowhere, she created something wondrous, then she sailed for her next port of call.

Okay, Universe. Bring me that horizon.

Full Flight

The sport of kings may cost a royal ransom to play, but the plebs can watch it for free. Or, rather, the price of admission. Or the cost of cable. Nitpicking aside, I watched the Kentucky Derby for the first time in years this year. I didn’t pick a horse. Well, I kind of did, just because I wanted an upset, and I think my choice came in fourth—I don’t even remember now. It doesn’t matter, either, because I don’t bet on horse races.

Ter used to visit the track with her dad when she was a kid. He’d give her a couple of bucks and off she’d go to the wicket, but her clearest memory is of collecting the multi-coloured ticket stubs discarded by the losers. I think she was there for the love of horses, too.

My speed-freakishness probably started in another life, maybe when I was Charlie’s girl and he took me to Newmarket for the races in 16-whenever. The origin of my love for horses, however, remains a mystery. And since I’m currently on a bender about the beauty in nature, I have lately been reminded of the saying—though I don’t recall who said it—that the most beautiful sight in creation is that of a horse running at a full gallop.

Personally, I think that a horse grazing beneath an apple tree is just as beautiful, but for sheer robbery of breath, never mind a thundering herd. A single horse in full flight is one of the most beautiful things I can imagine. The sun on a burnished coat, the light in a dark eye, the flowing mane and rippling muscle, yikes, the dream interpreters claim that horses represent sexual power, but really? Can’t they just be beautiful for beauty’s sake?

I will admit that watching the Derby can get my pulse racing, but the best race I ever saw was the Belmont Stakes in 1973, when Secretariat put twenty-five, no, thirty-one record-setting lengths between himself and the second place finisher. That was a race won by a lone horse in full flight.

And it was beautiful.