Everything Girl

My grandmother was, to paraphrase a line from an ancient episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a woman who knew how to moisturize. Until the day she died, her face was unlined, her olive skin soft and smooth. As I approach my fortieth birthday, I find myself looking back on childhood summers spend in her home, watching her beauty rituals on the movie screen in my mind.

In the morning, for example, she would go downstairs to breakfast in a nightgown and spritz her African violets, petting the furry leaves with her gentle fingers, and singing to them, calling them “pretty baby,” and coaxing them to blossom. Under her care, they always did, with deep purple flowers.

After breakfast, came her shower. What went on behind the pink plastic curtain is unknown to me, but I remember the scent of her loose powder, applied with a puff, hanging in the steamy air. I remember the taste of it, too, because I couldn’t help but inhale it at times. She would wrap a towel around herself and cross the balcony-style hallway to her bedroom, where she would dress in a bra and girdle she’d been stretching on the back of an antique, wire, ice cream parlor chair overnight, and then would come my favorite part: she would reach for her jar of Oil of Olay - the classic kind, in the pink glass jar with the striking black lid - and smooth tiny, pearlescent drops of it onto her face, her neck, her décolleté.

I remember the way her long fingers would dip into the bottle, like so many swans reaching down to the surface of the water, and I remember the way her skin would be dewy and fresh, and she would smell of talc and flowers, and the stronger scent of her favorite perfume, L’aire du Temps, by Nina Ricci. I remember the way she would dab the tiniest dot onto my nose, and remind me that “it takes pain to be beautiful.”

Her evening ritual was similar to the morning, though it would be tissues and Ponds cold cream instead of powder and Oil of Olay, and I remember watching her smooth that on, as well, working it from brow to chin, patting gently under her eyes.

This summer, I’ve been trying to economize a little, and one of the things I’ve changed is my moisturizer. I’ve been using Aveda’s Tourmaline Charged cream with the SPF in it for years, but my skin was becoming resistant, and at $22 a bottle it’s a bit pricey for a freelance writer who’s been having more dental work than writing work lately. I went looking for a less expensive moisturizer, and came home with Oil of Olay.

I don’t have a small child watching my ritual, and I’m fairly certain the dogs don’t care what I put on my face, unless it’s something they can lick off my fingers after, but when I’m in the bathroom, drawing out small drops of face cream and smoothing over my own skin, my grandmother is with me, and sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror, I see her eyes looking back.

My jar of cream is white, not pink, and it’s smaller than the jar Grandma always had. It’s a new version of the formula, with sunscreen added, and a slightly different scent, but the echo of familiarity fills my bathroom when I stand with my shower-damp hair and begin my own moisturizing routine.

I only hope that when I’m eighty, my skin looks as good as hers.

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