Like the Rings of a Tree

When Steve saw this picture of the two of us (taken last night at a production of Beauty and the Beast) he responded, “I’m so wrinkly. But I love your smile.”

I told him his wrinkles were one way for me to share his history with him, and suggested we each write a story about our wrinkles.

Here’s my story:

Though they’ve deepened with age, the wrinkles I’m going to write about have nothing to do with age. In fact, I’ve had them since I first remember looking in the mirror.

 

This picture proves it. I was only sixteen here, and see? Wrinkles on the forehead.

 

 

 

 

 

I inherited them from my dad.

There was a time I didn’t like these lines across my forehead—tried to cover them with bangs even. That probably came from my mom always telling me to stop wrinkling my brow or I’d have wrinkles forever. Well, I guess I didn’t listen, because I expect I’ll have them forever.

Maybe it’s because now I have other wrinkles to keep my forehead wrinkles company, or maybe it’s because these days I choose my battles, and the war against wrinkles is truly one I’ll ultimately lose. But they don’t bother me so much anymore. Oh, I’ll admit, occasionally when I catch an unexpected glimpse of myself in the mirror, or worse, when I accidentally turn my iPhone camera on myself, I think, “Oh my gosh! Is THAT what I really look like?” (We must each have an internal pair of rose-colored glasses that shifts into automatic when we “purposely” look at ourselves in the mirror.)

As I told Steve, every wrinkle has a story behind it. Some of the stories are happy and some are sad. But even the sad wrinkles came with lessons that hopefully have made me wiser, along with older.

My forehead wrinkles? Well, they’re happy wrinkles. They came from my dad, and they’ve been born of expressing myself, something I haven’t always found it easy to do.

So, here’s the other thing I told Steve when he complained about his wrinkles today. “Just think of all the new wrinkles we’ll make together.”