Sometimes I look in the mirror and see the vertical lines etched in-between my eyebrows (my “elevens”) and I pull back at the skin at the sides of my ears to get rid of the “parentheses” around my mouth and sigh a bit. It used to be that the elevens only showed themselves after a period of deep concentration and the parentheses meant I was smiling broadly, but they’ve now become a permanent part of my face. I’m trying to make peace with that (in between wishing I were brave enough to try a bit of botox), but I wouldn’t go back to the time when my face was smooth and wrinkle free — not because I’m enjoying the wisdom that comes with age, cause often I feel as clueless as ever, but because I don’t want to go back and relive all of the chaos in my past.
This morning I was trying to think back to where I was 20 years ago, the summer of 1994. Would I go back there and trade my 40 year old body for my 20 year old one? Hell no. The summer of 1994 is the summer my family moved from Oakland to Laguna Niguel (18 years in 1994 — right mom?) and I had more emotional highs and lows than any mentally healthy person should have in a lifetime. I was torn between an old love and a new one, was giving my dad a virtual F-you every night as I stayed out until 4 in the morning with my friends (since he was the one responsible for upsetting the balance in my life, why should I come home before midnight just because he wanted me to? I knew that wasn’t really true, but I felt justified in exploiting it. Sorry Dad). Since I was also working full time, between getting in at 4 or 5 in the morning and catching the BART train to Berkeley at 7:30 am, I was subsisting on 2 to 3 hours of sleep a night for about 2 months. Those were the good old days? No thanks.
Sure, I loved my job, loved my friends and all the emotion and feelings that we packed into our pre-leaving was a big rush and I loved every bit of that. But all the uncertainty, the self-centeredness (sorry to sisters whose pain I invalidated in an attempt to prove that mine was worse or more important), and my lack of direction was ugly.
What about 10 years ago? To the summer of 2004? A 30 year old has more life experience and almost no frown lines. That might be an excellent tradeoff. Would I trade my 40 year old body for my 30 year old one? Hell no to that era too. 10 years ago I was 2 days away from giving birth to Caleb and was out of my mind with anxiety. We had moved to 29 Palms 3 weeks before after a stressful and temporary move to my parents’ house while Josh was deploying to Iraq. Pregnant and mental me plus the stress of living with my parents with two little boys? I think I’ve blocked out most of those memories out of self-preservation. (Sorry Mom and Dad. I hope you’ve forgotten those two months too.)
So Josh was supposed to be leaving for Iraq, but because he hurt his back and could barely walk, instead of a trip to the Middle Eastern desert we joined him in the California desert while he underwent MRIs and cortisone shots in his spine. And then came baby, back surgery and a mental breakdown. Nope, wouldn’t go back.
Now in 2014 I wonder how am I going to assess this time in my life looking back from 2024 or 2034? I’ll probably envy the almost invisible lines and laugh at how my 40 year old self thought her skin looked anything but young and envy that this version of me highlights her hair only because she likes to add color and not to cover any grays. It feels like I’m doing fine, but I can only hope that my life has progressed to the point that I can look back to the summer that Josh deployed on 14 hours notice, canceling our family vacation, leaving me in a foreign country with 4 kids with no return date on the calendar and think, “Oh hell no. I wouldn’t go back. Not for the smoothest skin in the world.”