Butterflies

My 9-year-old has gotten really into makeup in the last year or so. She has a battalion of brushes, a parade of powders, an armada of applicators. She has absorbed some of my makeup—which I actually did use sometimes, and definitely wanted to keep for future use—and turned it into hers. Colors are blended. A rainbow of q-tips fills the bathroom trash. I’ve lost light colored hand towels to the cause. Her friends come over fresh faced after school and leave looking like fantastical butterflies.

Our whole thing has been, this is for fun and for those days when you’re feeling fancy or whimsical. Not “you need this to look pretty” and definitely not “you don’t need makeup.”

The crazy thing is, all the play actually is practice and she actually is getting good at it. She did my makeup the other day and it was surprisingly artful. Thick, sure, and did I need quite so much highlighter, I’m not sure, but I was overall impressed.

I recently fell for an online ad and bought that Il Makiage perfect match foundation. It looked really good on Alyson Hannigan. It came in a very cool magnetic box that obviously I set aside like, Well I can’t just throw away this cool magnetic box.

I did half my face, and while I didn’t look quite like Alyson Hannigan, I thought I looked smoother. So I did the other half. Then my 9-year-old wanted in.

I allocated her a dab on a sponge and she smeared it over her cheeks.

When she turned into the light, Drew said, “Oh, it’s so…yellow.” Then he looked at me. “It doesn’t look so yellow on you.”

I took another look at my daughter’s pre-adolescent, rosy cheeks and blemish-free skin. She doesn’t get greasy yet. She doesn’t have weird spots. She’s just pink and clear and clean and dewy. The makeup that is a perfect match for me looks…yellow on her.

I used to have 9-year-old skin like hers.

And that’s when I realized…I understand how the Wicked Queen must have felt. It was not just fading beauty but also all the time already gone; not just looking backward for herself but also recognizing what Snow White had to look forward to.

Okay. I saw someone say that if the average life span for women in the US is about 80 years old, then right now we are about halfway there. But unlike the first half, we are going into this part of our lives already knowing who we are, what we want, (generally) how to get it…we’re not dealing with everything that comes with the first half of life. Which I found reassuring. So, I get to wake up tomorrow and live the life I’ve created for myself…and I do it with skin that shows how far I’ve come. Okay. I’ll take it.

And if my 9-year-old can give me any makeup tips for those feeling fancy days, then all the better.