Planting Dandelions (29 page)

“I guess you got tattooed all right,” a friend smirked.

Surrender, the universe seemed to be saying. You're not That Girl anymore.

Oh, but I loved being That Girl. I knew exactly how to be her. I understudied for years as a kid, playing with Barbie dolls and reading fashion and beauty magazines. I practiced dress-up more than I ever rehearsed being a mommy. As an awkward-looking preteen, I despaired of ever getting to be her. As an insecure teenager, I faked that I was her. As a young newlywed playing house with my first husband, I buried her. And then I came to America, anonymous and free, and I became her.

“Like a movie stah,” one of our neighbors used to say, every time he saw me in one of my getups. “Like a seventies homecoming queen,” said Danny, the cook at the bar one day, looking me up and down, as I sauntered past in my standard waitressing uniform, bell-bottom jeans, towering heels, and a bared midriff. “Where
did
you come from?”

I laughed with the sheer pleasure of having created something that someone else appreciated. From nowhere, I told him. I made myself up.

Of course, I couldn't really pass for a movie star or homecoming queen, or even the prettiest girl in that barroom or most others. It was always a game of dress-up, closer to drag than fashion. But when I wore those clothes, I felt like a beautiful girl, enough to convince others that I was, or at least convince them to play along with me. It was a wonderful time, and there was a part of me that was sad to leave the ball when the clock struck midnight and turned my belly into a pumpkin. Any illusions I might have had about staying sexy through pregnancy, like real movie stars and prom queens do, were banished the first time I looked down and saw that there was a coffee ring on my maternity shirt, a few inches above the spot where I once sported a belly button ring. My girth was enormous enough for me to have rested my mug on it, level, while sitting up. I think of it as The Day Sexy Died.

It was later revived, but it's never been the same. Fortunately, becoming a mother puts sexiness in perspective. As does turning forty. It's not that it doesn't matter, it's that a lot of other things matter more. I wouldn't trade who I am now to be able to wear hot pants and thigh-high boots again. But it would be a lie to say I have been cheerfully letting go. As evolved as it would sound to claim that I embrace the first wiry gray hairs, the crow's-feet, and stretch marks as badges of experience, the truth is less pure. I mourn a little inside when I see a photograph of me with long glossy tresses and taut belly.

I've heard older women say that sometimes when they look in the mirror, they don't feel like themselves anymore. The image no longer reflects how they feel inside. A friend of mine in her sixties recently had a face-lift. Although we are close, there was a note of hesitation when she told me her plans. I think she was afraid I would judge.

When I was younger, I would have. There are all kinds of objections to be made to excising age this way, as if it were malignant. I always feel a little betrayed when I discover that someone who is older and beautiful has had “work” done. Because until I've learned the truth, I think perhaps it's possible for me to age as beautifully.
Look at her,
I think.
Fifty, and still so sexy. Well, why not? Maybe I could be, too. Who's afraid of fifty? Not me.
And then I find out they've “cheated,” and I despair a little.

My friend is as smart, as strong, and as deep as anyone I know. I couldn't judge her decision. If ridding myself of ten pounds or neck wrinkles were as easy as plucking gray hairs, what would the difference be? If I can have my hair cut or colored so that I feel my best, why not alter my face or my breasts? I use a face cream that removes old skin cells. Could I use a laser to remove more? A scalpel? Where is the line? I thought I knew it when I was thirty. Now I'm less sure.

I miss making heads turn. I am trying to accept that I will never weigh less than 120 pounds again without acute deprivation. It irritates me that the makeup and hair styling I used to do for fun now feels as necessary a prerequisite to leaving the house as brushing my teeth. It takes work just to look
okay
to myself. The big guns, like self-tanner and Lycra, are no longer just for special occasions. So much that was once optional and playful has become a maintenance chore. There's a striving to it that feels familiar, like those insecure teenage years, when I was trying so hard to act my way into someone I didn't know how to be yet.

I flicked on my straightening iron the other morning, and realized that the daily use of hair appliances is something I haven't done since I was a teenager, when I would set my radio alarm clock for five in the morning so I could scorch and lacquer my layered hair into sausage curls before school. In those years I wore a mask—literally—made with thick coats of cheap makeup. I used to wince to see old photos in which my face would be an entirely different flesh tone than my neck, but I came to look more lovingly upon them later. In some ways, the mask protected me while I was in that tender, larval state. It came off when I was ready to take it off and become my shiny new self.

I looked around my bathroom, noticing that every shelf and drawer was filled with the latest potions and powders, and realized I am back in metamorphosis again, straining toward what I don't yet know how to be. I understudy older women as carefully as I once pored over those beauty magazines, taking note of what works and doesn't work; dress, hair, makeup, comportment. Taking note of who has aged gracefully, who has hung on to her younger persona well past time, or who seems to have abandoned any interest in her own appearance. I especially note who can command respect and attention when she speaks, because so many older women often seem invisible and powerless in the company of men.

I'm embarrassed to admit that part has worried me. It seems ridiculously regressive that twenty years after adolescence, I am back to wondering how to get the boys to take notice, but the easy, obvious answer is getting less easy and obvious. Youthful sex appeal is a hefty talking stick in our culture. When it passes from me, will my voice still be heard? Maybe in ten or twenty years, I'll laugh at that question, and look back with fond bemusement at photos of my bottle-tanned, Lycra-bound forties. Maybe I won't miss being That Girl, because by then, I'll have become That Woman.

I actively scan the horizon for women who personify her with their vitality. I have one arm stretched out to them, and I am trying to summon the courage to let go with the other, make the leap, and grab hold of my future with energy and determination rather than just passively losing my grasp on the old power base. I swing back and forth on this trapeze, working my way up to flying across the gap, into the unknown.

I decided I would give myself a push by retiring the Super Heroine Dress in style. I wore it out dancing with friends one night, made the scene with it one more time. The polyester-draped figure I cut was that of a middle-aged mother of three, not a twenty-five-year-old party girl. Definitely not from the panel of a Marvel comic book. Definitely not the fantasy of any teenage boy.

I think it's okay. I have given birth to three children. I am a good mother. I've made it to the second decade of a marriage. I have many friends, a career that I love. I have different strengths now. I tell myself it is going to be okay. Better than okay.

As a friend in her fifties assures me, there are some pretty great compensations for not being the center of attention with the guys anymore. One of those, I'm discovering, is finally finding my place among women. I have somehow always had great girlfriends, but for years, I had no clue how to be one. My closest female friendships always came behind even the most casual relationship with a man. Women were Plan B. I could never have imagined, when I was twenty-five, being so content to spend an entire evening with only them, let alone looking forward to it all week.

My innermost circle of girlfriends widens, contracts, and rotates, with axis coordinates that change with the seasons. But for a few weeks in the spring they are fixed: five o'clock sharp, my front porch, kids welcome, no husbands, no regrets. The drinks are fancy, the snack is simple. The children are encouraged to play video games and forage from the pantry. It's our time. The Ladies have convened.

We talk about hair and makeup, sex, clothes, religion, music, food, and the riddle of being wives and mothers, and still ourselves. The laughter becomes deep and earthy. The second round is shaken and poured. Someone puts chicken nuggets in the microwave for the children. The husbands are called, soothed, cajoled, notified. A little while longer.

Patrick stays discreetly in the background, steering our boys toward baths and homework. On a trip inside to refill the ice bucket, I tease him, “We are talking about our vaginas. You don't want to go out there!” He raises his eyebrows in mock horror, smiles.

When the kids slip outside, hovering near the porch like moths around lamplight, I wonder if I should shoo them back inside, if our conversation is too strong for them. Patrick herds them into the house, again and again, but they keep escaping, dancing on the lawn in the twilight, pagans around a mighty bonfire.

A twenty-five-year-old girl might be hot as hell. But she can't know that deep warmth, that fierce heat.