My Angry 11's

On realizing that aging will happen to me too

It happened one day when I was walking past a gallery wall of family photos. I saw the way my eyebrows furrowed as I smiled in the most recent photograph, and I stopped. The printed picture of me did not match the picture I had in my head. The smooth skin on my forehead and delicate facial features now seemed somehow both sharper and slacker. My jawline was not as pronounced. My eyes looked more tired.

I had a baby on my hip and another child standing behind me. My husband to my left had similar crow’s feet starting to settle in, and he also looked tired. I attribute a number of the new wrinkles to our children. I think I aged at least five years in my face in my first year of motherhood. Of course my children are worth all the wrinkles and under-eye bags, but this is not an essay about parenting. It’s an essay about the cosmetics of aging and how much I did not think it would bother me, did not want it to bother me, and yet it does.

I never really noticed wrinkles until I tu…