Real-Life Fairy Tale

Nobody thinks they're going to get old.

I didn't either. People in my family age gracefully, but I assumed I would age so gracefully that I'd still look 35 when I looked in the mirror in later years. I don't. I look every second of my 54 years and then some when I look into the mirror -- the skin under my eyes is translucent and thin and bears a network of fine wrinkles. I have traces of laugh lines. My hair -- everything I didn't like about my hair at age 20 still applies today, only with 50% gray.  Bizarrely, my face has more character than it did when I was younger: I look at pictures of myself now, and I look less vague and more -- I don't know -- striking?

Portrait of the writer as an old woman.

My mother, my role model for all things feminine, hated getting older. Like me, she looked striking as an older woman. Like me, she grimaced when she looked in the mirror.

Like me, she maintained a fairy tale in her mind. In this fairy tale, a young, beautiful man would tell her she was beautiful, and she would be beautiful. There would magically be no repercussions from this on her marriage. In her bouts of compulsive shopping, she picked outfits she thought would make her more beautiful to this mysterious man.

Apparently, I take after my mother here too, except for the clothes shopping.

I occasionally develop crushes on beautiful young men (I am susceptible to beautiful young men). They have to seem like nice, honest men, who would not hit on me or string me along to make fun of me. It can't develop into anything more than a friendship. They have to be believable if they tell me I'm beautiful. It helps if they're in another country. The more hopeless the situation, the better.

I can't ask them if they think I'm beautiful, because that breaks the magic spell, the alchemy that happens when the person I find most beautiful thinks I'm beautiful.

My fairy tale: Someone sends me an anonymous message telling me I'm beautiful, and I have to figure out who it is. Or an non-anonymous message, but they write it with heart. Or someone shows up to my coffee hours on campus*  Notice that I didn't say flowers. I need words, because I have trouble interpreting anything else.  I need meaning so I can intuit meaning. Flowers will scare me away if they're florist-types.  Courtly tokens are welcome. Locks of hair?** In other words, an unsolicited message*** with honesty, simplicity, effort. Something transgressive -- not in terms of boundaries, but in proclaiming that feelings are important and don't have to result in harm.

In other words, I have set a nearly impossible quest, just like the set of instructions in the song "Scarborough Hill" (Tell her to make me a cambric shirt /Without no seams nor fine needle work). It's seemingly doable, except for the part where it violates human nature -- middle-aged women are not considered beautiful, beautiful men have suspicious girlfriends, nobody makes an impact on the Internet, people just don't do that. 

But it's a fairy tale, a magic quest. And maybe those still have a purpose in life.




* If you are a student, don't tell me you think I'm beautiful. Just don't go there.

** Cut the hair at the bottom of the hairline at the nape of the neck. Cut the whole lock, no wider than half the width of the pinky. Secure one end with string or a small rubber band. Mail to my home address.

*** Some of you might be asking about my husband at this time. Richard is a delightful lot of things, the love of my life, but romantic is not one of those. First of all, Richard is one of the most pragmatic people I've ever met. He's in his head most of the time; he's the "I married you, didn't I?" sort. He does housework to show me he loves me.  He brought me a lemon tree from Hy-Vee for Valentines' Day, which shows he knows me better than anyone. But the only time he tells me I'm beautiful is when he's reminded to. That's just who he is. He's a lot like my father.