What horrible things emotions are! Pass me the chocolate. : )

A Wrinkle in Time

I was checking my e-mail... okay, so more accurately I was procrastinating the pharmacology quiz that I absolutely had resolved to do tonight by checking my e-mail knowing that there probably wasn't anything there I would need before tomorrow, and I saw an add for wrinkle cream. Why inane stimuli like wrinkle cream adds, pickle jars, and noisy toddlers inspire pointless rambles is a wonderful question--perhaps if I were to study my pharmacology class more diligently I would be able to find some solution for the convoluted way my mind constructs its distractions, but alas, if I was able to focus enough to find said cure I would not be able to ramble on this way and there would be no need for one in the first place.

So the wrinkle cream add. It had this picture of an adorable grandmother absolutely bedeckled in wrinkles smiling so big I could probably have shoved my little finger between the little pitchforks fanning out from her eyes. The add talked about how you could avoid having that face with their cream, and I found myself inexplicably sad at the idea. Call me crazy, but I want my face to tell my story, assuming, of course, I have a story to tell at some point that involves more than checking e-mail and studying. I want to keep my freckles for at least a little bit--show that I love the sunshine and prefer to meet the weather with my face up to the sky and not down at the sidewalk. I want the tiny scars on my forehead to endure to remind me to never ever go revert back to what made me unhappy. I want to keep at least a few acne scars as proof that I did the whole greasy moody teenager thing and I know what it is like and I never ever ever have to do it again. Most of all, though, someday I want wrinkles. I want them to fan out from my eyes and collect around the corners of my mouth and scrunch up along the bridge of my nose. I want smile lines and laugh lines and giggling lines. I want people to be able to look at me and know that I did something--something besides study and apply pharmacological principles and anti-wrinkle cream. I want them to see worry lines and love lines and mischievous lines and lines that they wonder about--expressions they don't quite understand. I feel like aging is a right of passage--a process where you find out and create the person you want to be on purpose, and I feel like you should be her inside and out. So someday, assuming I get to be a grandma someday, I want my family to look at my face and say, "she was a smiler. She was someone who did stuff. You can tell--just look at her." So to all you grandma's out there--I think you are beautiful. I think your wrinkles enhance your features and help define your persona as someone who lived and laughed and loved and smiled. Keep smiling.

Falling for someone should be easy.