I’m into natural beauty. I hear people are giving their daughters nose jobs for their 18th birthday. I love my daughter’s nose, and I’d much rather cut up anybody who comes near it. It is perfect just the way it is. Who would want a mass-produced Barbie for a daughter?!..
But that’s another story. This is about me. I’m beginning to grow old. Time forgives no one, bla bla… well, the thing is, I keep noticing these gray hairs here and there, these new wrinkles and pores and spots on my face, and I realize the time has come when my skin just needs additional support systems. I figure nature always has the perfect remedy, so what I do is use a cucumber mask.
It went from a little thin slice now and then, stolen from the kids’ dinner, to hoarding enormous reserves of cucumber in the vegetables storage compartment of my fridge.
And let me tell you, life is full of cucumber moments. Every time I cry at cartoons, every time I don’t get my 8 hours of sleep at night (which is almost every night…), I place a slice of raw cucumber on my face. Whether I’m happy or sad, in love or in the middle of a fight, watching my kids sleep or watching a sentimental movie, feeling elated or despondent, the moment tears start dripping down, I lunge for that refrigerated cucumber. I feel a tear coming and bells start going off in my head: uh oh, cucumber material! And I dart.
So when my husband of 12 years decided – for no apparent reason – to declare his love spontaneously for the very first time (and – may I add – quite convincingly, too) while we were driving the kids to the lake the other day, I looked at him with all the shock and disbelief of someone just awakened from the dead and I almost begged him to stop.
But then I thought, ‘it’s cucumber times like this that we are living for’, and I let the floodgates open. Tears started flowing like tap water. In his eyes too. We just had one of those moments. We kissed, and my son grumbled “Oh, not agaaaain…” and life sort of made real sense. I may have bulging red eyes and a lot of wrinkles, but I feel like someone whose missing child has just been found safe and sound and is on his way home again.
So, next time when life gives me cucumber, I’ll just make a salad.
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